Egypt election result due Thursday

Egypt's presidential election committee is still compiling results from polling stations and will announce the winner of the country's first real presidential vote on Thursday, a senior member of the body told Reuters on Monday.
   
The campaigns of both the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate Mohamed Morsy and former air force commander Ahmed Shafik have claimed they are leading the race, each citing their own unofficial tallies.
   
"We have nothing to do with the results being circulated," Judge Maher el-Beheiry said. He said the committee was awaiting results from polling stations, where he said counting may still be going on.
   
"We will compile the results we receive and look into appeals and in principle we will announce results on Thursday."

Meanwhile, Egypt's ruling military council said on Monday that the army will hold a ceremony to hand over power to the country's newly elected president at the end of June, the state news agency MENA said.        

"The army will hand over power to the elected president in a big ceremony end-month that the entire world will witness," Major-General Mohamed El Assar, a member of the ruling army council, was quoted by MENA as saying. "Egypt is a modern democratic country that upholds all democratic values."       
                                                    
In a victory speech at the headquarters, Morsi clearly sought to assuage fears of a large sector of Egyptians that the Brotherhood will try to impose stricter provisions of Islamic law.                                           
By the group' count, Morsi took 13.2 million votes, or 51.8 percent, to Shafiq's 48.1 percent out of 25.5 million votes with more than 99 percent of the more than 13,000 poll centers counted.                               

Reuters/AP