Egypt’s new president Mohamed Morsi is a US educated academic

Egypt’s first civilian president -Mohamed Morsi

Morsi becomes Egypt’s 5th president, following Hosni Mubarak, who was president for nearly 30 years.

Morsi’s received 51.7 per cent of the vote to 48.3 per cent for his rival, Ahmed Shafiq, Hosni Mubarak’s former prime minister.

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Egypt’s new president is a US educated academic

Abdel-Rahman Hussein
The Guardian

Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, is a US-educated engineering academic who owes his ascendancy in the Muslim Brotherhood to his close ties with the group’s initial favoured candidate for president.

Born in 1951 in Sharqiya on the Nile delta, Morsi studied engineering at Cairo University before pursuing a doctorate at the University of Southern California. He was an assistant professor at California State University, Northridge in the early 80s. His children were born there and hold US citizenship.

Morsi was an MP from 2000-2005 and then a member of the Guidance Bureau, the highest authority within the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2011, with the formation of its political arm, the Freedom and Justice party, Morsi was appointed as the head. He was arrested numerous times by the old regime, once in 2006 where he spent seven months behind bars. Most recently he was arrested with other Brotherhood leaders during the revolution on the “Friday of Anger”, 28 January 2011.

He owes his rise in the Muslim Brotherhood to his allegiance to its current deputy head, Khairat al-Shater, who was also a presidential nominee and is considered the brains behind the group.

His loyalty to the Brotherhood is unquestionable, and a Morsi presidency would see an extension of Brotherhood policies, especially in implementing its 12-year economic Renaissance project. After the goings-on of the past few weeks the Brotherhood is adopting a more conciliatory approach to other political forces. In a recent press conference Morsi implied that he would attempt to rule by consensus and talked of Egypt being a “civil and democratic” state. He has also promised that his cabinet would reflect national consensus and his premier would be an independent national figure not affiliated with the Brotherhood.

Dealings with the military generals would be a bit trickier, as the recent head-to-head has shown. The Brotherhood wants the military to restore its hold on parliament, and by extension its hold on the constitution. The generals seem unwilling to give that up.

There will also be issues with Scaf’s latest constitutional decree, which limits the presidential powers, as well as the formation of the national defence council that gives decisions of national security matters to the military rather than to the president.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/24/profile-mohamed-morsi

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 Video: June 24, 2012 Egyptians celebrate