Egyptian cabinet meets as poll turns violent

electoral commission announced that he would face an Islamist rival in a runoff for president.
Media reports said cabinet would hold a meeting in the wake of the attack, after a senior military official said the army had plans to deal with any violence ahead of the decisive election.
Police, who put their forces on alert, said eight suspects were arrested near the office following the attack, which came hours after electoral officials said that the holdover from Mubarak’s regime would face the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Mursi in the second round vote on June 16-17.
The protesters ransacked Shafiq’s office, according to an AFP correspondent who visited the building in the middle class Dokki neighbourhood of Cairo yesterday.
The assailants had broken or toppled every piece of furniture inside the two-storey villa late on Monday, and also set alight an annex of the headquarters.
Several doors, windows and mirrors inside the office were broken, while the street outside the villa was littered with campaign leaflets which cleaners were busy collecting.
“The premises will be refurbished and Mr Shafiq will continue to use them to lead his campaign,” said Ahmed Abdel Ghani, a Shafiq supporter.
After the attack, some of the protesters returned to Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square, throwing Shafiq’s campaign leaflets on the street.
There were no immediate reports of injuries at the headquarters and firefighters said the blaze was quickly put under control.
“We were inside when they attacked us,” one member of Shafiq’s campaign staff said, without identifying himself. “They set fire to the garage that had general Shafiq’s campaign literature.”
Earlier around 1 000 protesters had gathered in Tahrir Square to protest Shafiq’s presence on the runoff ballot.
“Shafiq will be president when I’m dead,” read one poster on a car parked in the square, the hub of last year’s uprising.
Announcing the results, electoral commission chief Faruq Sultan had said no candidate won a majority in the first-round vote on May 23-24, so the two with the highest votes, Mursi and Shafiq, would enter a runoff.
Mursi won with 24,77 percent of the votes, slightly ahead of Shafiq with 23,66 percent.
Leftist candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi came third with 20,71 percent, ahead of moderate Islamist Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh with 17,47 percent.
Former foreign minister Amr Mussa was fifth, trailing with 11,12 percent.
The commission put the official turnout in the vote — the first since the 2011 uprising that ousted Mubarak — at 46 percent of the 50 million people eligible to cast ballots in the historic election.
Both Mursi and Shafiq, who represent polar opposites in the country’s fragmented politics after last year’s uprising, are now trying to court the support of the losing candidates and their voters. — AFP.