“I am pleasantly surprised that (leftist opposition candidate) Hamdeen Sabbahi fared so well,” said Egyptian activist and novelist May Telmissany, who supports Hamdeen Sabbahi. She continued, "I still cannot believe that the Muslim Brotherhood fielded a candidate when it had vowed it wouldn’t. As for Shafiq’s victory, I believe the military rooted for him and rigged the vote. He couldn’t have possibly won 5.5 million of the votes. In fact we know now that active-duty military conscripts who are ineligible to vote did actually cast ballots for Shafiq." The leftist Nasserite candidate, who came in third place in last week’s poll, has filed complaints that some 900,000 military conscripts voted for Shafiq, when the law forbids them to participate in an election. 

“We will pressure the electoral commission to re-examine the results but I don’t believe there will be massive protests or renewed violence, at least for now. We have to act in a civil and democratic way,” she said, seconding recent statements by Sabbahi after Shafiq’s headquarters were set on fire by an angry crowd Monday night.

“The good news is that the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party has lost 5 million of [the] votes in six months between this election and the parliamentary election back in November 2011. And this, even when they are by far the most organized movement at the grassroots level,” Telmissany said. But she preferred to see the glass half-full: “The Brotherhood garnered 25% of the vote in the presidential election, which means 75% of the Egyptians don’t want them. And 76% of Egyptians don’t want Shafiq either.”

“This is what we must keep in mind when we go vote in the second round,” she continued. "If Shafiq wins, protesters will hit the streets soon after, as he is everything we fought against during the revolution. If Morsi wins, people will wait and see but soon enough protests will erupt again as the Brotherhood is not equipped to manage the country, neither politically nor economically. The revolution is not over,” she concluded.