Wherein I Am Glad I Don't Live In Egypt

  Preliminary results of Egypt’s strung-out parliamentary elections suggest that Islamists will be easily the largest and most potent political force

IF THE results of the first batch of Egypt’s elections are replicated across the country, the Islamists will emerge as a lot more powerful than most analysts predicted. In a string of villages and cities, including Cairo, Alexandria and Port Said, the Muslim Brothers seem to have scored between 30% and 40%, which would earn them at least 40% of seats in the People’s Assembly, the legislature’s lower house. Even more strikingly, the Salafists, who espouse a more extreme and puritanical Islamist ideology, have far exceeded expectations, in some places getting a good 20% of the vote. So the combined tally looks set to give assorted Islamists a straight majority of seats in the assembly. A new political dynamic is in the offing.""