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Egypt's elections authorities say they will delay announcing who won Egypt's presidential election but have not given a new date.
The Supreme Elections Commission said in a statement Wednesday that results won't be announced on Thursday as scheduled because the commission is looking into complaints presented by rival candidates.
A panel of judges must examine some 400 complaints over voting submitted by both Ahmed Shafiq, ousted leader Hosni Mubarak's prime minister, and the campaign of Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi.
Amid reports that Hosni Mubarak is clinically dead, the Muslim Brotherhood thinks it won the Egypt elections and now wants full power. But the campaign of Ahmed Shafiq, ousted President Mubarak's old prime minister, said he really won the elections. NBC's Richard Engel reports.
"We cannot announce when exactly the timing of the announcement of the election results will be because now we are at the stage of listening to the representatives," Committee Secretary-General Hatem Bagato told Reuters.
Egypt's Hosni Mubarak reportedly clinging to life in military hospital
"The committee will meet afterwards to decide on whether to accept the appeals or not. After that there will be a time set to announce the final result," Bagato added, speaking by phone.
He issued an official statement later in the day with more detail.
"The committee has decided to continue to examine the appeals, which involves looking at records and logs related to the electoral process, and this will necessitate more time before announcing the final results," the statement said.
The instability in Egypt poses a dilemma for the United States. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.
Any lengthy delay in disclosing the results risks prolonging uncertainty and stoking tension at a time when it is unclear how big a role the military will continue to play in leading the country. No official figures have been announced, but candidates had representatives at polling stations and were able to make their own tallies.
"We must give both sides all the time they need to ensure that the process is fair and prevent any claims later on that not enough time was given to both sides," Bagato explained.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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What a mess. I hope for the Egyptian people this has a good outcome and they haven't replaced one dictatorship with another.
Exactly, and if you don't choose the Muslim Brotherhood candidate the same thing will happen. Egypt is certainly in a pickle now.
No matter what the outcome of the election they will have replaced one dictatorship with another. The only question now is will it be another secular dictatorship controlled largely by the military or will be it an Islamic dictatorship controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood. If the MB is allowed to gain control, there is no way that they will ever risk losing that control by allowing fair elections in the future. They already demonstrated that when the MB controlled parliament tried to remove Shafiq from the run-off election by passing a law that no members of the former government can hold positions in the new government. The MB would restrict who could run in future elections so as to ensure that only candidates favorable to the MB could run. The country is far better off under a relatively benign secular dictatorship controlled by the military than under an Islamic republic controlled by the MB under which the rights of women will almost completely disappear along with the rights of anyone who does not follow their prescribed version of Islam.
JS in SD, I bow to your knowledge of the subject. Refreshing to read someone who actually understands the situation.
Keep up the good work and please ad me to your friends list.
I've rarely heard something more dumb. It would appear that several million Egyptians disagree with both of us, as they started a revolution. The army obviously doesn't like it, and that is a serious problem.
As far as the MB restricting who could run in future elections, we do that in the US, too. It's called gerrymandering. And yet we manage to elect people anyway.
The mentally ill should not be allowed to run for office or vote in elections. Anyone who believes in the Bronze Age Superstitions of Middle Eastern savages is mentally ill.
Meanwhile, Shafiq believes in "one man, one vote". He's the man, his vote is the one that counts.
Who gets to determine who is mentally ill?
Just say Shafiq won. End of story
Deleted, mispost.