Morsi declares victory, Shafiq claims reverse

Egypt\'s Muslim Brotherhood has claimed victory in historic presidential polls The Muslim Brotherhood\'s Mohammed Morsi has secured victory in the presidential run-offs, his campaign announced in the early hours of Monday, as vote counting wrapped up at most polling stations across Egypt.
In a press conference at his campaign headquarters, Morsi\'s campaign said that their candidate has won 52.5 percent of the vote, while his contender, Hosni Mubarak\'s last Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq garnered 47 percent. Counting has been completed at more than 97 percent of polling stations, according to the campaign.
Morsi arrived at the press conference to thank his followers for his victory and reassure sceptics.
\"I thank God for this victory. It\'s a victory for all Egyptians,\" he said before a jubilant crowd. \"We come with a message of peace, to everyone... to the revolution and the revolutionaries... to men and women, mothers, sisters, workers, students, to Egyptians outside and inside Egypt, to Egypt of the Muslims and Egypt of the Christians.\"
Morsi vowed not to \"settle any account for now\" and said that his agenda is to build a \"civil, democratic, modern and constitutional state.\"
After the announcement, a handful of Morsi supporters chanted, \"The free revolutionaries will continue their victory!\" and \"Down with military rule!\"
Meanwhile, Shafiq\'s campaign announced in TV statements that they reject the initial results. In two phone calls to the CBC Channel and ON TV, Mahmoud Baraka and Ahmed Sarhan, two spokesmen for Shafiq\'s campaign, said that the results of Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) are the opposite of the truth and an attempt to control the media. Baraka said that initial results show that 52.5 percent of the vote in fact went to Shafiq, while Morsi only got 47.5 percent. Baraka also reminded his audience that 13 percent of polling stations are yet to announce their results.
According to the Brotherhood\'s FJP count, 23,841,259 have cast votes, or over 45 percent of the 50 million eligible voters. That number, which is based on 97 percent of polling stations, is expected to rise. Early projections put Morsi ahead by a landslide, but that margin narrowed as new numbers came in. Much of Morsi\'s support came from Upper Egypt, while Shafiq fared better in Cairo and the populous governorates of the Nile Delta.
Earlier, head of the Supreme Presidential Electoral Committee, Chancellor Farouk Sultan, revealed Sunday that the security forces had arrested three men who were \"preparing a plot to incite  people to storm the presidential palaces in Cairo in case the results of the runoff round of the presidential elections was in favour of former regime-linked candidate Ahmed Shafiq.
In a press conference held on Sunday evening at SPEC\'s headquarters in Heliopolis, Cairo, Sultan said a head of one of Cairo\'s electoral committees suspected three men, with a laptop in the hands of one of them, while they were trying to push the residents of Manshiyet Nasser neighbourhood to vote for the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi.
Sultan added that security personnel have searched the laptop and found a CD containing \"terrorist plots that include the usage of advanced arms,\" in addition to another plan to incite the Egyptian people to storm Cairo\'s presidential palaces in militant protests in the event that Shafiq won. Sultan named the three arrested men as; Ashraf Mahammadein, Ahmed Hussein and Amr Ahmed, while he said the security personnel saw a car waiting for them, but the driver ran away before the police reached him.
Sultan said at the end of the conference that the official results are expected to be declared by the end of the week.