AL-ADWA, Egypt - Water buffalo wander through the dirt roads of Mohamed Mursi's village, less than two hours' drive from the Cairo palace where Egypt's Islamist president-elect has begun work. Yet Mursi, unlike Hosni Mubarak, remains close to his humble Nile Delta roots and can perhaps bridge the gap between ruler and ruled that yawned so wide under his ousted predecessor. At least his younger brother thinks so. "We don't want the president living on one planet and the people on another," Sayed Mursi, wearing a traditional robe, told Reuters in the family's rural home, crudely built like many others with steel bars poking up from the roof to allow the addition of a new floor as need requires or money allows. Mursi, 60, who won the presidency for the once-banned Muslim Brotherhood, has no plans to move to the presidential palace from his house in Cairo, he said after his victory was declared on June 24, 500 days after a popular revolt deposed Mubarak. "We cannot return to the past," said 49-year-old Sayed, whose mobile has hardly stopped ringing since his brother became Egypt's first freely elected president and the only one not pulled from top military ranks. Army officials, traditionally wary of Islamists, refused to comment on Mursi's character or his ability to lead Egypt, but privately expressed disappointment in his apparent disregard for protocol when he chose to start work from the presidential palace this week before being sworn in. Mursi, the talented son of a peasant farmer, studied in the sprawling cities of Cairo and Los Angeles before rising to lead the Muslim Brotherhood's small opposition bloc in Mubarak's otherwise compliant parliament from 2000 to 2005. That experience in public life did not seem to instil any presidential ambitions in him. When he was informed that the Brotherhood's first-choice candidate Khairat al-Shater had been ruled out and he would run instead, one aide said Mursi buried his face in his hands for a few moments to take in the news. His accession to the highest office in the land, albeit one the military has already drained of powers, has surprised many Egyptians and dismayed secular-minded young people who did not revolt against Mubarak to smooth an Islamist's path to power. After Shater was barred from running, some branded him the movement's "spare tyre". Critics see him as a Brotherhood functionary who has shown little hint of charisma so far, a quality also conspicuously lacking in his predecessor Mubarak whose dour approach contrasted with the political risk-taker Anwar Sadat and Gamal Abdel Nasser whose eloquence gripped the Arab world. Mursi looked stiff and uneasy at the start of his election campaign, when he clogged his speeches with lists that were swiftly mocked by Egyptians with a taste for grand speeches. He has little time to grow into the presidential role, faced with the aspirations of 82 million people seeking responsive, honest government, security and relief from economic hardship. Praised by friends, family and Islamist colleagues as diligent, determined and even jovial in private, to many Egyptians he is president by default and a front man for the Islamist group that has been the army's adversary for decades. "He is a man who follows a (Brotherhood) system. Even as a leader he follows a system," said Mohamed Salama, a 24-year-old engineering student at Zagazig University in the Nile Delta where Mursi taught from 1985 to 2010. Describing him as a well-respected professor, Salama, who met Mursi privately in November shortly before the Brotherhood swept a parliamentary poll, said the presidency was "bigger" than Mursi. He argued, like many Egyptians, that Brotherhood leaders, as well as the generals, would really wield power. "Dr Mursi will not rule, firstly because the military council won't let him rule, secondly because he is a member of the Brotherhood," said Salama, although Mursi has resigned from the movement to be "president for all Egyptians". One possible eminence grise is Shater, the Brotherhood's deputy leader, chief strategist and financier. A Mubarak-era criminal conviction, which he contests, blocked his candidacy. In early campaigning, Shater's towering frame overshadowed the stocky, bespectacled Mursi, who described his presidential bid as more a duty than ambition. "We are worried," Mursi said, "that God will ask us, on the day of reckoning: 'What did you do when you saw that the nation was in need of sacrifice and effort?'" Some see that loyalty as defining his presidency. "He is dedicated to the organisation. He is very conservative and not open to political and national forces, but he is a clever person," said Mohamed Habib, a member of the Brotherhood's guidance bureau for almost a quarter of century, overlapping with a period when Mursi was on it too. "But on the issue of creative or innovative thinking, perhaps he doesn't have that," said Habib, who quit the Brotherhood in 2011 over its post-uprising policies. Mursi's colleagues at university dismiss talk of man lacking leadership potential or an independent mind. "He can take decisions alone ... He won't go asking for advice from Mohamed Badie (the Brotherhood's supreme guide) or Khairat al-Shater," said Christian colleague, Ishac Ibrahim, 66, a professor of steel structures and bridges. He described Mursi as a hardworking man who would greet him on Christian holidays and who stuck to his principles. "When he sees something wrong, he stands against it. He doesn't just go with the flow." Hossam Attiya, 56, who worked under him in the engineering department of Zagazig University, called Mursi a painstaking academic who was strict with any students who lacked commitment. Seated on a tattered armchair in a university office with an old air-conditioner rattling in the corner, Attiya said Mursi could have headed the institution if known Brotherhood members had not been barred from such posts. Mursi was Attiya's graduate supervisor at Cairo University in the mid-1970s. "He was very detailed in his reviews. He really tired me with it, but it was very useful," he said. At that time, Attiya said, Mursi was a devout Muslim but no more so than most Egyptians, who pray regularly and observe the Ramadan fast each year. That changed when Mursi travelled to California to study at the end of 1978.
