Leading Egyptian politicians across the spectrum are saying that they respect the results of Egypt's first free parliamentary elections, and that they are ready to work with whoever the people have chosen. The two main Islamist parties have made a very powerful showing, and whoever wants to have any influence in Egypt will have to work with them, even if they have resisted Islamist influence in the past.
The first stage of the three-stage parliamentary elections gave the Muslim Brotherhood 36.6 per cent and the Nour Party, a more hardline Islamist group 24.4 per cent.
The secular reformists who launched the Arab Spring in February had a disaster at the polls when the liberal Egyptian bloc only managed to attract 13.4 per cent of the vote.
On the present showing, the two Islamist parties are likely to make common cause and form a government together. But there is a lot of wishful thinking from liberals that there might be a split between the very conservative Salafis who dominate the Nour Party, which has proposed implementing a much stricter form of Islam, and the Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.
