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Shafiq won Egyptian presidential election: campaign official

20 June 2012 00:24 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Egyptian presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq’s campaign team announced that their candidate had won the election, as his rival also claimed victory, state media reported on Tuesday, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Shafiq’s senior campaigner, Ahmed Sarhan, said at a press conference that the Muslim Brotherhood’s claim of Mohamed Morsi’s victory Tuesday was based on incorrect counting which included invalid votes.

Sarhan added that Shafiq won the presidency with 51.5 percent of the valid votes, and that all proclaimed numbers by the media were based on their own counting and investigations, not official sources.

He described the actions of Morsi’s campaign as "media tsunami, " accusing them of exploiting the absence of the media in some balloting stations.

"Egypt will always be a civil country," Sarhan said, noting that Shafiq’s campaign team has filed several appeals to the Higher Presidential Elections Commission (HPEC) over the counting process in some electoral centers.

He described the alleged violations of the governmental printing houses as "a scandal," saying that if the investigations are confirmed, almost one more million votes will be added to Shafiq.

Sarhan meanwhile asked citizens in all governorates to celebrate Shafiq’s winning. "Celebrate and don’t panic, Shafiq is the winner," he said.

In a statement on Tuesday, the HPEC said that it is still working on revising the results of the sub-committees all over Egypt, calling Morsi and Shafiq to stop issuing their own counting results.

Egypt held the run-off of the presidential election on Saturday and Sunday with the two candidates both claiming their victory.

The ruling military council has affirmed that they will transfer power to the newly elected president before the end of June.