CAIRO - In a reversal of fortunes unthinkable a year and a half ago, an Islamist jailed by Hosni Mubarak has succeeded him as president of the biggest Arab nation in a victory at the ballot box which has historic consequences for Egypt and the Middle East. The Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsy will not enjoy the extent of modern, pharaonic powers exercised by Mubarak: those have been curtailed by a military establishment which will decide just how much he will be able to do in government. Still, the US-trained engineer's victory in the country's first free presidential election breaks a tradition of domination by men from the armed forces, which have provided every Egyptian leader since the overthrow of the monarchy 60 years ago, and installs in office a group that drew on 84 years of grassroots activism to catapult Morsy into the presidency. He has promised a moderate, modern Islamist agenda to steer Egypt into a new democratic era where autocracy will be replaced by transparent government that respects human rights and revives the fortunes of a powerful Arab state long in decline. Morsy is promising an "Egyptian renaissance with an Islamic foundation". Yet the stocky, bespectacled 60-year old, appears something of an accidental president: he was only flung into the race at the last moment by the disqualification on a technicality of Khairat al-Shater, by far the group's preferred choice. With a stiff and formal style, Morsy, who has a doctorate from the University of Southern California, cast himself as a reluctant late comer to the race, who cited religious fear of judgement day as one of his reasons for running. He struggled to shake off his label as the Brotherhood's "spare tyre". Questions remain over the extent to which Morsy will operate independently of other Brotherhood leaders once in office: his manifesto was drawn up by the group's policymakers. The role Shater might play has been one focus of debate in Egypt. "I will treat everyone equally and be a servant of the Egyptian people," Morsy said at his campaign headquarters in Cairo shortly after polling ended, a week before his victory was confirmed by the Mubarak-era body overseeing the vote. But many Egyptians, not least the Christian minority, remain suspicious of Morsy and even more so of the group he represents. Anti-Brotherhood sentiment, fuelled by both a hostile media and some of the group's policies, has soared in recent weeks. Ahmed Shafik, the former general he defeated, won nearly as many votes as Morsy, signalling that Egypt is a nation that is anything but united around the idea of Brotherhood rule. Morsy won a little less than a quarter of the first-round vote in May. That a man who served as Mubarak's last prime minister was so close to victory has been seen as one sign of failure by the Brotherhood - which has described itself as the victim of a vicious campaign orchestrated by its enemies. At first, Morsy pitched himself as a conservative Islamist - the only one in the field, he said. He repeatedly promised to implement Islamic law in speeches peppered with references to God, the Prophet Mohammad and the Koran. "It was for the sake of the Islamic sharia that men were ... thrown into prison. Their blood and existence rests on our shoulders now," Morsy said in one of his early campaign rallies. Though not one of those jailed for years, he was held on more than one occasion by Mubarak's feared state security men. But he has seldom spelled out what precisely his call to implement sharia, or Islamic law, would mean for Egypt, where piety runs deep and the constitution already defines the principles of the sharia as the main source of legislation. Morsy has said Brotherhood rule would not mean that Egypt will be a theocracy, adding that there is little difference between the phrase "the principles of the sharia" - the term found in the current constitution - and the sharia itself. Pushed by one TV interviewer to clarify what Islamist rule might mean for bikinis on Red Sea beaches - and so for Egypt's vital tourist industry - Morsy did not give a clear answer. He described such issues as "very marginal, very superficial and affecting a very limited number of places", adding that sector specialists must be consulted on all draft laws. It was typical of the vagueness that has fuelled concerns among those Egyptians whose fears were also exacerbated by other elements of the Morsy campaign, including his early efforts to court the ultraorthodox Salafi Islamist movement. In a gesture to Gama'a al-Islamiya, one such group, Morsy pledged to work for the release of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, a militant preacher imprisoned in the United States for planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Another cleric, the independent Safwat el-Hegazi, added a radical flavour to Morsy's early campaign, taking to the stage at his events to call for a Muslim super-state across the Middle East with Jerusalem as its capital - a direct challenge to Israel with whom Mubarak maintained a 33-year-old peace treaty. Morsy subsequently distanced himself from such statements, but not before the Shafik campaign had used them to great effect to paint the Brotherhood's man as a dangerous radical.
