Cairo: Egypt’s President Mohamed Mursi, the first Islamist to be elected to the presidency, said on Sunday that he will be a leader “for all Egyptians” and called for national unity after a polarizing race, media reported on Sunday.
According to reports, following a deeply divisive race against Ahmed Shafiq, the last premier to serve under ousted president Hosni Mubarak, the islamist leader Mohammad Mursi was finally declared as the President of Egypt.
“I will be a president for all Egyptians,” Mursi said.
“I call on you, great people of Egypt … to strengthen our national unity,” he said, adding that national unity “is the only way out of these difficult times.”
Mursi won 51.73 percent of the vote, with 13,230,131 ballots.
The election has polarized the nation, dividing those who feared a return to the old regime under Shafiq from others who wanted to keep religion out of politics and who fear the Brotherhood would stifle personal freedoms.
Mursi, who resigned from the Muslim Brotherhood to take the top job, thanked the “martyrs” of the uprising for the victory and stressed “the revolution continues.”
The 60-year-old engineer also vowed to honor international treaties.
“We will preserve all international treaties and charters … we come in peace,” Mursi said.
Egypt is one of only two Arab countries — the other is Jordan — to have made peace with the Jewish state. The Egypt-Israel peace treaty was signed in 1979.
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