Men's voting queue before Egyptian constitutional referendum in 2011. Photo: wiki commons.

NY Times – The Islamist candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood appeared set to face former President Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister in a runoff to become Egypt’s first freely elected president, several independent vote counts concluded Friday morning.

A small portion of the ballots remained to be counted. But out of a broad field of more than a dozen candidates, the runoff appears almost certain to pit the two most polarizing figures against each other in a reversion to the decades-old power struggle between Egypt’s secular-minded military elite and its longstanding Islamist opposition.

Read full story.