, will have to exert himself much before coasting to victory in the polls, now scheduled for May 26th. As leader of the coup that toppled President Muhammad Morsi last July, Mr (as he now is) Sisi is in effect the candidate of Egypt's state, backed by its 7m-strong civil service as well as the powerful army a

and shouldn't be counted out. Knowing in advance that Shater's disqualification was a possibility, the organization nominated a second candidate, Muhammad Morsi. A longtime member of the Brotherhood's leadership ranks, Morsi emerged as one of the public faces of the organization after the revolution as head

world's biggest country. Amr Moussa, the diplomat we supported in the first round, was trounced, and Egyptians now have a wretched choice between Muhammad Morsi, a dreary Muslim Brother who narrowly won the first round, and Ahmed Shafiq, a former air-force chief and standard-bearer for the Mubarak old guar

gyptian and Palestinian national interests," fumed the Western-backed Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Early hopes that Egypt's new president, Muhammad Morsi, might put the Hamas genie back in its bottle have subsided. Under his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, donors meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh in March 2009

, will have to exert himself much before coasting to victory in the polls, now scheduled for May 26th. As leader of the coup that toppled President Muhammad Morsi last July, Mr (as he now is) Sisi is in effect the candidate of Egypt's state, backed by its 7m-strong civil service as well as the powerful army