Mohammed Morsi the 'substitute'

"The only candidate who had unwillingly put his bid, and the only one whom the people had unwillingly voted for!". This is a joke that is circulating among the Egyptian youth on Facebook and Twitter, after the preliminary results of the runoffs of Egypt's presidential elections showed that the Muslim Brotherhood's "substitute" candidate Mohammed Mors, is likely to be Egypt's first President after the January 25 revolution. The joke reflects the fact that Morsi was not the favourite nomination for his Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) the political face of the Brotherhood, as the FJP first nominated the Brotherhood's strong man Khairat al-Shater, whose bid was rejected by the Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission for legal reasons. Morsi was not the favourite candidate of the pro-revolution youth groups either, but they were forced to vote for him in the runoff round, to prevent a success for Mubarak's regime-linked candidate Ahmed Shafiq. Their support for Morsi seems to have paid off, as the results appear to show that Morsi has topped Shafiq by a narrow margin. Born in 1951 in the Sharqiya governorate in the eastern Nile Delta, Morsi grew up in a rural middle-class family. He moved to Cairo in the late 1960s to study at Cairo University, graduating in 1975 with a BA in Engineering with high honours. Morsi performed his military service in the Egyptian army from 1975 to 1976 and was assigned to the chemical warfare unit. He then earned a Masters Degree in metallurgical engineering from Cairo University in 1978. Morsi has been married since 1978 and currently has four sons, a daughter and three grandchildren. Morsi became ideologically attracted to the politics of the Muslim Brotherhood in the mid-1970s, becoming an official member in 1979. In the early 1980s, he received a scholarship from the University of Southern California for academic excellence in engineering, and earned a Masters Degree and PhD in rocket science in 1982. He worked as a professor at California State University in North Ridge in the United States between 1982 and 1985. After the conclusion of his academic career abroad, Morsi served as head of the engineering department at Zagazig University in Egypt from 1985 until 2010. He was first elected to the People's Assembly, the lower house of Egypt’s parliament, in 1995 as a nominal independent for the Nahtay district of the Gharbiya governorate. He was re-elected to parliament in 2000. Morsi served as official spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc from 2000 to 2005. During his parliamentary tenure, Morsi was one of the most active members of the Brotherhood’s bloc in the People's Assembly. He was the author of one of parliament's famous inquests into public officials in recent history. The investigative work specifically looked into the 2002 Cairo-Aswan train disaster, which left over 350 passengers dead. In 2005, he was chosen as the best MP in the world for his legislative and observatory performance from 2000 to 2005. In the first-round of voting for the 2005 parliamentary elections, Morsi received the highest numbers of votes, but lost to his opponent in subsequent runoffs. Morsi spent seven months in jail after being arrested in May 2006 – along with dozens of other Brotherhood members – for supporting a group of reformist judges who had staged demonstrations against the fraud that had accompanied the 2005 elections. Morsi also represented the Brotherhood in several umbrella movements working for democratic reform. He was a co-founder of the National Front for Change (Kefaya) along with former prime minister Aziz Sedki in 2004. Kefaya was the first movement to call for Mubarak's step down in public after 23 years of his rule. Morsi also participated in the establishment of the National Assembly for Change in 2010 with reform activist Mohamed el- Baradei. On the morning of Egypt’s "Friday of Rage" on 28 January 2011, Morsi was arrested, along with 24 other Brotherhood leaders, and detained in Wadi Natrun Prison in Egypt's Western Desert. He was released two days later by local residents after prison guards abandoned jails across the country. On April 30 2011, not long after Mubarak’s ouster, Morsi resigned from the group’s Guidance Bureau after it appointed him president of the first ever political party to be established by the group in its 80 years history: the Freedom and Justice Party. Under Morsi’s leadership, the Brotherhood’s FJP achieved a landslide victory in the first parliamentary  elections after the revolution in late 2011, winning more than 45 percent of the vote and securing a parliamentary majority through its alliance with the Salafist Nour Party. After the Supreme Presidential Elections Commission barred the Brotherhood's strongman Khairat al-Shater from standing in May presidential elections, the group’s leadership asked Morsi to run for president – a move that earned him two nicknames:f "the substitute" and "the spare tyre" by the group’s critics. Morsi's candidacy was hurt  by misgivings on the part of some voters about the Brotherhood, after the group broke its post-revolution promise not to field a candidate in presidential elections. Meanwhile, many observers raised doubts about him being subject to the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood's General Guide Mohammed Badie, and his deputy Khairat al-Shater. Those observers say that Morsi may serve as a cover for the two "real presidents", Badie and Shater. At daybreak on Monday, just a few hours after the closure of electoral stations, Morsi announced his win at his campaign's headquarters. He thanked the Egyptian people for their trust and sent messages and remarks. "I thank God who has guided Egypt’s people to the path of freedom and democracy, uniting Egyptians for a better future,” Morsi said. He pledged to serve both those who voted for him and those who did not, and vowed to seek justice for those killed in the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak's government. "To all the martyrs and to their families ... I pledge to restore their rights through law and in a law-abiding nation,” he added. He pledged to work "hand-in-hand" with all Egyptians "for a better future, freedom, democracy, development and peace." "We are not seeking vengeance or to settle scores," he said, adding that he would build a "modern and democratic state" for all Egypt’s citizens, Muslims and Christians. Morsi's supporters, along with some pro-revolution youth groups, celebrated his announced victory in Tahrir Square and other main sites in Egypt. They were seen screaming with excitement, some wiping tears from their eyes at the apparent victory that marks the culmination of a long political road for the once-banned Muslim Brotherhood.