CAIRO: Amr Moussa, a front-runner for Egypt’s presidency, said Sunday the strong Islamist showing in the first parliamentary election since Hosni Mubarak was toppled in February had to be swallowed as democracy in action.

The Muslim Brotherhood has also urged its rivals to “accept the will of the people” after a first-round vote set its party on course to take the most seats in parliament, with a hard-line Salafi Islamist party thrusting liberals into third place.

Overall, the initial election results suggest Islamist parties, while not united, may wield a two-thirds majority in parliament. It reinforces a trend in North Africa where Islamists now lead governments in Morocco and Tunisia.

In line with the Brotherhood’s pragmatic image, the group’s Freedom and Justice party may avoid lining up with its ultra-conservative Islamist rivals.

But its popular mandate will strengthen its hand in any power struggle with the military over Egypt’s political future.

Egyptians return to the polls Monday for 52 run-off votes for individual candidates, who will occupy a third of the 498 elected seats in the lower house once two more rounds of the complicated voting process end in January. Two-thirds of the seats are allocated proportionately to party lists.

Figures released by the election committee and published by state media show a list led by the Brotherhood’s FJP securing 36.6 percent of valid party-list votes, followed by the Salafi Al-Nur Party with 24.4 percent, and the liberal Egyptian Bloc with 13.4 percent.

The liberal Wafd Party took 7.1 percent, the moderate Islamist Wasat Party 4.3 percent, while the Revolution Continues, a group formed by youth activists, picked up 3.5 percent.

“I am happy about the application of the democratic process, the beginning of democracy,” said Moussa, a former Mubarak-era foreign minister and secretary-general of the Arab League.

“You cannot have democracy and then amend or reject the results,” he told Reuters by telephone, adding that the shape of parliament would not be clear until the voting was over.

Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday called on Egypt’s future rulers to preserve a peace treaty with Israel.

“We hope any future government in Egypt will recognize the importance of keeping the peace treaty with Israel in its own right and as a basis for regional security and stability,” Netanyahu said in his first public comments on a vote that has raised concern in Israel.

The fate of the 1979 treaty between Egypt and Israel is also a concern for its sponsor, the United States, which has backed it with billions of dollars in military aid for both countries.  The Muslim Brotherhood, spiritual father of the Islamist Palestinian Hamas group, shares widespread Arab hostility toward Israel, but it has not called for revoking the treaty.

The assembly’s popular mandate will give it clout to stand up to the generals who have ruled Egypt for nine turbulent months since a popular uprising toppled Mubarak on Feb. 11.

Protests against army rule had led to clashes with police in Cairo in the week before the vote, raising fears of an election marred by violence, yet voting passed off calmly.

But the state news agency reported Sunday that a fight erupted between supporters of a candidate for the liberal Free Egyptians party in the Nile Delta area of Manoufiya and backers of the rival Wasat party. The driver of the Free Egyptians candidate died of a gunshot wound to the stomach, it said.

The Brotherhood, Egypt’s best-organized political group and popular with the poor for its decades of charity work, was banned but semi-tolerated under Mubarak. It now wants to shape a new constitution to be drawn up next year.

That could be the focus of a power struggle with the ruling military council, which wants to keep a presidential system, rather than the parliamentary one favored by the Brotherhood.

“I believe the constitutional debate will be a very serious and tough one. I don’t think any party can impose its own language or principles,” Moussa said. “The constitution will have to be the outcome of consensus and general debate among the people. The liberal camp is also strong.”

The Salafis are expected to demand that purist Islamist codes be reflected in the constitution and other legislation, forcing the Brotherhood to defend its own Islamist image.

The constitution, to be written by a constituent assembly chosen by parliament, may go to a referendum before a presidential election in June, under an accelerated timetable for a handover to civilian rule. The generals, who had envisaged keeping power until end-2012 or beyond, agreed to a speedier transfer after last month’s bloody street protests against army rule killed 42 people.