Police in front of the court during the announcement that Egypt's parliament will be dissolved.[/caption]
Just half an hour before the results of Egypt’s presidential election was announced, the founder of one of the country’s most influential revolutionary groups sounded worried.
“I know it’s going to be Ahmed Shafik,” said Shady al-Ghazali Harb, referring to the former fighter pilot who was running against the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi.
Claiming he had seen photocopies of the official results which had been leaked online by the Shafik camp, he predicted that Egypt was about to erupt in chaos. “I don’t think we will see any sort of stability any time soon,” he said during phone.
A couple of hours later – following an announcement which was delayed in quintessentially Egyptian fashion – Shady, along with plenty of others who had predicted a Shafik triumph, was proved wrong.
When the Presidential Election Commission confirmed that Morsi had indeed won, Tahrir Square erupted. Grown men wept as fireworks rocketed into the sky, while bare-chested shabaab swung their T-shirts around their heads as they clung on to towering lamp-posts.
“I feel so proud of Egypt,” said Mohammad Houssam, 24, amid a thunder of cheers and chanting. “Our revolution has created a new direction for Egypt.”
Many pundits had predicted renewed violence in the event of a victory for Mr Shafik, a man who activists link to the old regime.
But the historic win for the Muslim Brotherhood – the first time an Islamist has been democratically elected president in the region – appears to have staved off the immediate threat of further unrest.
Yet problems lie ahead. The first of these will have to be negotiated on Saturday, when Mr Morsi is due to be sworn in as president.
He and many of his followers would like him to do this in front of parliament. But given that the parliament was recently dissolved, the military council has said this is not possible.
Instead, say officials, the new president should be sworn in before the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC), the very body which dissolved the legislature earlier this month.
Yet Mr Morsi is on the record as saying that the SCC’s decision to dismiss MPs was illegitimate. As a result, activists say it would appear hypocritical and weak if he were to take his oath in front of the court’s judges.
“This is the first question for him,” said Diaa Rashwan, an expert from the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. “If he doesn’t go to the court to be sworn in, I don’t think the authorities in the state will recognise him as president.”
There are other, arguably more pressing issues. The military remains Egypt’s eminence grise; a force which now controls foreign affairs and defence policy following a series of recent decrees.
Mr Morsi’s presidency, however historic, has been neutered by Egypt’s generals. To claw back the powers enjoyed by a fully functioning head of state will eventually require some kind of confrontation.
The new president could decide that a confrontation is unnecessary; that a quasi-military establishment might not be so anathema to the Brotherhood’s political programme.
Alternatively, he may take his cue from the much-cited Turkish model, chipping away at the military’s privileges one chunk at a time and thereby avoiding a head-on collision.
The worst case scenario would be yet another conflagration – a sudden deterioration between Egypt’s two main power blocs which would send the nation hurtling towards further unrest.
For now, a welcome detente has been established and many Egyptians are breathing a sigh of relief. But how long the peace will hold is difficult to tell.
