Egypt shares slump as clashes continue in central Cairo

[Joe Higashi]

Egypt shares slump as clashes continue in central Cairo
Sapa-dpa | 25 November, 2012 12:55

Protesters run from the riot police during clashes at Tahrir square in Cairo November 25, 2012. Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi's decree that put his decisions above legal challenge until a new parliament was elected caused fury amongst his opponents on Friday who accused him of being the new Hosni Mubarak and hijacking the revolution. Police fired tear gas in a street leading to Cairo's Tahrir Square, heart of the 2011 anti-Mubarak uprising, where thousands demanded Mursi quit and accused him of launching a "coup". There were violent protests in Alexandria, Port Said and Suez.
Image by: MOHAMED ABD EL GHANY / REUTERS

The Egyptian stock market slumped Sunday, as protesters clashed with riot police near the embassy of the United States in central Cairo, state media reported.

The Cairo Stock Exchange's main EGX30 index had plunged by 8.7 per cent by midday, more than the allowed limit, prompting trading to be suspended for half an hour.

Sunday marked the first day of trading since President Mohammed Morsi angered his opponents by granting himself new sweeping powers.

On the streets of Cairo, clashes were reported near the embassy, which is just south of Tahrir Square. The military had previously erected a concrete wall to block direct access from the square to government institutions.

Egyptians have taken to the streets for a seventh day in a row now. The protests started on Monday, with a demonstration marking the anniversary of last year's deadly clashes, which led to the ousting of president Hosny Mubarak.

The protests swelled on Thursday, shortly after Morsi issued a constitutional amendment preventing the courts from blocking his decrees or drafting a new constitution.

According to the Health Ministry, 57 people were injured in Cairo and in the Nile Delta city of Damanhour during the morning clashes.

Elsewhere, two explosions damaged police and intelligence properties in the city of Rafah, in the Sinai peninsula.

Four members of the Central Security Forces were injured in one of the blasts, which targeted a building - still under construction - hosting a number of police officers.

Another explosion had previously rocked an intelligence office in the same city. No injuries were reported in that attack.

Islamist militants are believed to have been responsible for several attacks on a Sinai pipeline that exports gas to Israel, as well as raids on police stations in the mountainous desert peninsula.

 

[Joe Higashi]

Mursi move splits Egypt
Date November 25, 2012

Opposite reactions … Mohammed Mursi addresses supporters in Cairo. Photo: Reuters

A decree by the Egyptian President, Mohammed Mursi, granting himself extensive new powers triggered demonstrations on Friday by both supporters and opponents.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square to denounce the move, chanting ''Leave! Leave!'' and comparing Dr Mursi to the ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Several kilometres away, members of the Muslim Brotherhood, with which Dr Mursi is affiliated, rallied in front of the presidential palace to show support for the country's first democratically elected president.

Divided ... opponents ransack the premises of Mursi's Freedom and Justice Party in Alexandria. Photo: AP

The atmosphere at each demonstration laid bare the divisions facing Egyptian society. In Tahrir Square, the crowd was largely liberal, secular and educated. In front of the presidential palace was a much more religious crowd, a mixture of educated Muslim Brotherhood supporters and people whose tattered clothes suggested their hopes for the nation outstripped their financial means.

Offices of the Muslim Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party in several cities were torched by protesters angry at Dr Mursi's decree, which exempted his decisions from judicial review and ordered retrials for former top officials, including Mr Mubarak.

The decree, issued a day after Dr Mursi won international praise for fostering a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, appears to leave few if any checks on his power.

''My duty is to move forward with the goals of the revolution and eliminate all obstacles of the past that we have,'' Dr Mursi told the crowd.

In the port city of Alexandria, protesters stormed the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters, threw books and chairs into the street and set them on fire. Supporters and opponents of the President threw rocks at each other near a mosque in Alexandria, Reuters reported.

In Washington, a State Department official said the Obama administration was pressing Dr Mursi's government to explain his declarations of extrajudicial power, which ''have raised concerns'' in the US.

A spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said: ''We are very concerned about the possible huge ramifications of this declaration on human rights and the rule of law in Egypt.''

Dr Mursi's assertion of control raised questions about whether Egypt might be returning to a Mubarak-era arrangement: a country praised for bringing stability to a volatile region and tolerated despite abusing human rights at home.

A Muslim Brotherhood adviser, Gehad el-Haddad, said: ''This level of immunity for presidential decrees is indeed unprecedented, but it is necessary, and it is controlled by a time frame that ends with the election of a new parliament.''

 

[saltwater]

Mursi to Meet With Judiciary Today, State-Run News Agency Says

<cite class="byline" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 11px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; width: 640px; color: rgb(111, 111, 111); display: block; font-style: normal; line-height: 1.3em; position: static !important; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">By Zaid Sabah and Timothy R. Homan - Nov 26, 2012 6:09 AM GMT+0800</cite>
Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi will meet with the nation’s judicial council today, the state- run Middle East News Agency reported, citing presidential spokesman Yasser Ali. The president saw his top advisers and aides yesterday, Ahram Online reported, as opposition mounted against the Islamist’s decision last week to grant himself new powers. Stocks tumbled yesterday, sending the EGX 30 down 9.6 percent, the biggest drop since January 2011, after four days of unrest.

Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi addresses his supporters in front of the presidential palace in Cairo on Nov. 23, 2012. Mursi on Nov. 22 issued a decree that prevents his actions from being challenged by the judiciary. Source: AFP/Getty Images

Mursi on Nov. 22 issued a decree that prevents his actions from being challenged by the judiciary. Protests against the decree continued after the announcement by Egypt’s judiciary Nov. 24 that courts would suspend work until Mursi rescinds his decision.

“This suggestion that the judiciary is going to halt all court proceedings, it ought to be taken as a serious threat,” Charles Holmes, a Middle East analyst and a director at Marcher International LLC, a political research consultancy, said yesterday in a phone interview from London. “The judiciary has always kind of remained the last bastion of anything remotely approaching an independent check on the powers of the presidency. It’s a relatively secular body. It’s not thought of as having a deep religious affiliation.”

Temporary Measure

The Egyptian president’s office said the decree extending his powers was “necessary” and temporary after they sparked unrest and were criticized by opponents as a blow to democratization efforts.
The move was intended “to hold accountable those responsible for corruption as well as other crimes during the previous regime and the transitional period,” according to a statement from Mursi’s office. “The presidency reiterates the temporary nature of said measures, which are not meant to concentrate powers.”

Mursi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood before he was elected, is committed to engaging “all political forces in the inclusive democratic dialogue to reach common ground,” and to bridging differences on drafting a new constitution for the country, according to yesterday’s statement.

Power Grab

Critics said the decree amounted to a power grab and likened it to the policies of the regime of President Hosni Mubarak that led to his ouster last year. Others said it was evidence the Muslim Brotherhood was trying to cement its hold on power. The crisis could mobilize an opposition of secularists and youth groups that have largely been unable to unify since Mubarak’s ouster.
Thousands of demonstrators flooded the square that served as the focal point for the uprising against Mubarak over the weekend. Mursi took the stage there in triumph after winning the presidency in June, pledging to be the president for all Egyptians.

Some analysts are skeptical that Mursi will reverse last week’s decision when he meets with judiciary officials. “Unless it’s a complete reversal of the decrees, which is by no means what has occurred, I think it’s a largely symbolic or meaningless gesture,” Bill Martel, a professor of international security studies at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, said yesterday in a phone interview.

Upper House

Mursi’s decree includes reinvestigating and possibly retrying top Mubarak-era officials in relation to the killing of protesters. The committee drafting the constitution and parliament’s upper house can’t be dissolved, it says. Both the legislature’s upper chamber, or the Shura Council, and the constitutional panel are dominated by Islamists. Yesterday, the head of the constitution-drafting committee, Hossam el-Gheriany, called for the return of members who have withdrawn to protest what they say are attempts by Islamists to dominate the process, the state-run news agency reported.

Secular groups and opposition parties have called for new mass rallies tomorrow while the Brotherhood announced demonstrations in support of Mursi on the same day, raising the prospect of renewed violence if the two sides clash. Arizona’s John McCain, the ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday” that Mursi’s actions are “unacceptable” and the U.S. should demand that he “renounce the statement” and “allow the judiciary to function.”

Caution Urged

“We have to be very cautious,” Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said yesterday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “We don’t obviously want to see a democratically elected autocrat take the place of an undemocratically dictator, which was the case before that,” he said, referring to Mubarak.

Mursi’s decisions “raise concerns for many Egyptians and for the international community,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Nov. 23. “One of the aspirations of the revolution was to ensure that power would not be overly concentrated in the hands of any one person or institution.”

The Brotherhood said several of its headquarters around the country came under attack over the weekend by protesters, including on Nov. 23 when crowds estimated to be greater than 300,000 massed in Tahrir Square in Cairo.

An attack on a Muslim Brotherhood office by “thugs” in the Egyptian city of Damanhour in theNile Delta led to the death of one member and the injury of 60 others, the group’s Justice andFreedom Party said yesterday on its Facebook page. The party identified the victim as 15-year-old Islam Fatahi. More public unrest is possible if Mursi doesn’t withdraw his decree.

“It would be remarkably uncharacteristic for a standing president of Egypt to backtrack on anything,” Holmes said. “I just don’t see how he could publicly climb back down. It would be highly, highly unusual for the president to do that, to basically say, ‘I was wrong.’”

To contact the reporters on this story: Zaid Sabah Abd Alhamid in Washington [email protected]; Timothy R. Homan in Washington at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at [email protected]

 

[Perfectum]

Egypt's Mursi holds crisis talks over power grab

By Yasmine Saleh and Edmund Blair
CAIRO | Mon Nov 26, 2012 12:22pm EST

(Reuters) - Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi negotiated with senior judges on Monday to try to defuse a crisis over his seizure of new powers which set off violent protests reminiscent of an uprising last year that led to the rise of his Islamist movement.

The justice minister said he believed Mursi would agree with Egypt's highest judicial authority on its proposal to limit the scope of the new powers. Mursi's spokesman said the president was "very optimistic Egyptians would overcome the crisis".

But the protesters, some camped in Cairo's Tahrir Square, have said only retracting the decree will satisfy them, a sign of the deep rift between Islamists and their opponents that is destabilising Egypt two years after Hosni Mubarak was ousted.

"There is no use amending the decree," said Tarek Ahmed, 26, a protester who stayed the night in Tahrir, where tents covered the central traffic circle. "It must be scrapped."

One person has been killed and about 370 injured in clashes between police and protesters since Mursi issued the decree on Thursday shielding his decisions from judicial review, emboldened by international plaudits for brokering an end to eight days of violence between Israel and Hamas.

The stock market is down more than 7 percent.

Mursi's political opponents have accused him of behaving like a dictator and the West has voiced its concern, worried by more turbulence in a country that has a peace treaty with Israel and lies at the heart of the Arab Spring.

Mursi's administration has defended his decree as an effort to speed up reforms and complete a democratic transformation. Leftists, liberals, socialists and others say it has exposed the autocratic impulses of a man once jailed by Mubarak.

"President Mursi is very optimistic that Egyptians will overcome this challenge as they have overcome other challenges," presidential spokesman Yasser Ali told reporters, shortly before the president started his meeting with members of Egypt's highest judicial authority, the Supreme Judicial Council.

COMPROMISE?

The council has hinted at a compromise, saying Mursi's decree should apply only to "sovereign matters". That suggests it did not reject the declaration outright. It urged judges and prosecutors, some of whom went on strike, to return to work.

Justice Minister Ahmed Mekky, speaking about the council statement, said: "I believe President Mohamed Mursi wants that."

The presidential spokesman said two Mursi aides had asked to resign over the crisis, but Mursi had yet to accept.

The protesters are worried that Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood aims to dominate the post-Mubarak era after winning the first democratic parliamentary and presidential elections this year.

A deal with a judiciary dominated by Mubarak-era judges, which Mursi has pledged to reform, may not placate them.

A group of lawyers and activists has also challenged Mursi's decree in an administrative court, which said it would hold its first hearing on December 4. Other decisions by Mursi have faced similar legal challenges brought to court by opponents.

Banners in Tahrir called for dissolving the assembly drawing up a constitution, an Islamist-dominated body Mursi made immune from legal challenge. Many liberals and others have walked out of the assembly saying their voices were not being heard.

Only once a constitution is written can a new parliamentary election be held. Until then, legislative and executive power remains in Mursi's hands, and Thursday's decree puts his decisions above judicial oversight.

One Muslim Brotherhood member was killed and 60 people were hurt on Sunday in an attack on the main office of the Brotherhood in the Egyptian Nile Delta town of Damanhour, the website of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party said.

The party's offices have also been attacked in other cities.

ASSURANCES

One politician said the scale of the crisis could push opponents towards a deal to avoid a further escalation. Mursi's opponents have called for a big demonstration on Tuesday.

"I am very cautiously optimistic because the consequences are quite, quite serious, the most serious they have been since the revolution," said Mona Makram Ebeid, former member of parliament and prominent figure in Egyptian politics.

Mursi's office repeated assurances that the steps would be temporary, and said he wanted dialogue with political groups to find "common ground" over what should go into the constitution.

Talks with Mursi have been rejected by members of a National Salvation Front, a new opposition coalition that brings together liberal, leftist and other politicians and parties, who until Mursi's decree had been a fractious bunch struggling to unite.

"There is no room for dialogue when a dictator imposes the most oppressive, abhorrent measures and then says 'let us split the difference'," prominent opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei said on Saturday. He has said he expected to act as the Front's coordinator.

The military has stayed out of the crisis after leading Egypt through a messy 16-month transition to a presidential election in June. Analysts say Mursi neutralised the army when he sacked top generals in August, appointing a new generation who now owe their advancement to the Islamist president.

Though the military still wields influence through business interests and a security role, it is out of frontline politics.

Egypt had hoped to stop the economic rot by signing an initial deal last week for a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. As well as tumbling share prices, yields at a Sunday treasury bill auction rose, putting even more pressure on the government that faces a crushing budget deficit.

"We are back to square one, politically, socially," said Mohamed Radwan of Pharos Securities, an Egyptian brokerage firm.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry, Patrick Werr and Marwa Awad in Cairo; Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Giles Elgood)

 

[Joe Higashi]

Egypt protests continue in crisis over Mursi powers

By Edmund Blair
CAIRO | Wed Nov 28, 2012 9:50am EST

(Reuters) - Hundreds of demonstrators were in Cairo's Tahrir Square for a sixth day on Wednesday, demanding that President Mohamed Mursi rescind a decree they say gives him dictatorial powers, while two of Egypt's top courts stopped work in protest.

Five months into the Islamist leader's term, and in scenes reminiscent of the popular uprising that unseated predecessor Hosni Mubarak last year, police fired teargas at stone-throwers following protests by tens of thousands on Tuesday against the declaration that expanded Mursi's powers and put his decisions beyond legal challenge.

Protesters say they will stay in Tahrir until the decree is withdrawn, bringing fresh turmoil to a nation at the heart of the Arab Spring and delivering a new blow to an economy already on the ropes.

Egypt's Cassation and Appeals courts said they would suspend their work until the constitutional court rules on the decree, which has further damaged Mursi's already testy relationship with the country's judges.

In a speech on Friday, Mursi praised the judiciary as a whole but referred to corrupt elements he aimed to weed out.

A spokesman for the Supreme Constitutional Court, which declared the Islamist-led parliament void earlier this year, said on Wednesday that it felt under attack by the president.

"The really sad thing that has pained the members of this court is when the president of the republic joined, in a painful surprise, the campaign of continuous attack on the Constitutional Court," said the spokesman Maher Samy.

Senior judges have been negotiating with Mursi about how to restrict his new powers, while protesters want him to dissolve an Islamist-dominated assembly that is drawing up a new constitution and which Mursi protected from legal review.

Any deal to calm the street will likely need to address both issues. But opposition politicians said the list of demands could grow the longer the crisis goes on. Many protesters want the cabinet, which meets on Wednesday, to be sacked, too.

Mursi's administration insists that his actions were aimed at breaking a political logjam to push Egypt more swiftly towards democracy, an assertion his opponents dismiss.

"The president wants to create a new dictatorship," said 38-year-old Mohamed Sayyed Ahmed, who has not had a job for two years. He is one of many in the square who are as angry over economic hardship as they are about Mursi's actions.

"We want the scrapping of the constitutional declaration and the constituent assembly, so a new one is created representing all the people and not just one section," he said.

The West worries about turbulence in a nation that has a peace treaty with Israel and is now ruled by Islamists they long kept at arms length. The United States, a big donor to Egypt's military, has called for "peaceful democratic dialogue".

Two people have been killed in violence since the decree, while low-level clashes between protesters and police have gone on for days near Tahrir. Violence has flared in other cities.

WRANGLES

Trying to ease tensions with judges, Mursi said elements of his decree giving his decisions immunity applied only to matters of "sovereign" importance, a compromise suggested by the judges in talks.

That should limit it to issues such as declaring war, but experts said there was much room for interpretation. The judges themselves are divided, and the broader judiciary has yet to back the compromise. Some have gone on strike over the decree.

The fate of the assembly drawing up the constitution has been at the centre of a wrangle between Islamists and their opponents for months. Many liberals, Christians and more moderate Muslims have walked out, saying their voices were not being heard in the body dominated by Islamists.

That has undermined the work of the assembly, which is tasked with shaping Egypt's new democracy. Without a constitution in place, the president's powers are not permanently defined and a new parliament cannot be elected.

For now, Mursi holds both executive and legislative powers. His decree says his decisions cannot be challenged until a new parliament is in place. An election is expected in early 2013.

"If Mursi doesn't respond to the people, they will raise their demands to his removal," said Bassem Kamel, a liberal and former member of the now dissolved parliament that was dominated by Mursi's party, a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

He said Tuesday's protest showed that Egyptians "understood that the Brotherhood isn't for democracy but uses it as a tool to reach power and then to get rid of it".

Protecting his decisions and the constituent assembly from legal review was a swipe at the judiciary, still largely unreformed since Mubarak's era.

One presidential source said Mursi wanted to re-make the Supreme Constitutional Court after it declared the parliament void, which led to its dissolution by the then ruling military.

Both Islamists and their opponents broadly agree that the judiciary needs reform, but Mursi's rivals oppose his methods.

The courts have dealt a series of blows to Mursi and the Brotherhood. The first constituent assembly, also packed with Islamists, was dissolved. An attempt by Mursi in October to remove the unpopular general prosecutor was also blocked.

In his decree, Mursi gave himself the power to sack the prosecutor general and appoint a new one, which he duly did.

(Additional reporting by Tamim Elyan; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Will Waterman)

 

[OppaGANGNAMStyle]

All this is, strangely, good for the country as it grapples with the right type of democracy suitable for their religious country.

 

[Sun Wukong]

Thousands rally behind Mursi

Opposition protests turn violent in Alexandria, Nile Delta

ALISTAIR LYON AND TAMIM ELYAN, REUTERS

FIRST POSTED: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 01, 2012 04:50 AM EST | UPDATED: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 01, 2012 09:57 AM EST

Protesters gather in Tahrir Square in Cairo November 30, 2012. (REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih)

CAIRO - Islamist crowds demonstrated in Cairo on Saturday in support of President Mohamed Mursi, who is racing through a constitution to try to defuse opposition fury over his newly expanded powers.

Many thousands assembled outside Cairo University, waving Egyptian flags and green Islamist emblems to show their backing for the president and the constitution he is promoting.

Mursi was expected later in the day to set a date for a referendum on the constitution hastily approved by an Islamist-dominated drafting assembly on Friday after a 19-hour session.

Mohamed Ibrahim, a hardline Salafi Islamist scholar and a member of the constituent asssembly, said secular-minded Egyptians had been in a losing battle from the start.

“They will be sure of complete popular defeat today in a mass Egyptian protest that says ‘no to the conspiratorial minority, no to destructive directions and yes for stability and sharia (Islamic law)’,” he told Reuters.

Demonstrators, many of them bussed in from the countryside, held pro-constitution banners. Some read “Islam is coming”, “Yes to stability” and “No to corruption”.

Tens of thousands of Egyptians had protested against Mursi on Friday and rival demonstrators threw stones after dark in Alexandria and the Nile Delta town of Al-Mahalla Al-Kobra.

“The people want to bring down the regime,” they chanted in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, echoing the slogan that rang out there less than two years ago and brought down Hosni Mubarak.

Mursi plunged Egypt into a new crisis last week when he gave himself extensive powers and put his decisions beyond judicial challenge, saying this was a temporary measure to speed Egypt’s democratic transition until the new constitution is in place.

His assertion of authority in a decree issued on Nov. 22, a day after he won world praise for brokering a Gaza truce between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement, dismayed his opponents and widened divisions among Egypt’s 83 million people.

Two people have been killed and hundreds wounded in protests by disparate opposition forces drawn together and re-energised by a decree they see as a dictatorial power grab.

Mursi has alienated many of the judges who must supervise the referendum. His decree nullified the ability of the courts, many of them staffed by Mubarak-era appointees, to strike down his measures, although says he respects judicial independence.

A source at the presidency said Mursi might rely on the minority of judges who support him to supervise the referendum.

Mursi, once a senior Muslim Brotherhood figure, has put his liberal, leftist, Christian and other opponents in a bind. If they boycott the referendum, the constitution would pass anyway.

If they secured a “no” vote to defeat the draft, the president could retain the powers he has unilaterally assumed.

And Egypt’s quest to replace the basic law that underpinned Mubarak’s 30 years of army-backed one-man rule would also return to square one, creating more uncertainty in a nation in dire economic straits and seeking a $4.8 billion loan from the IMF.

“NO PLACE FOR DICTATORSHIP“

Mursi’s well-organised Muslim Brotherhood and its ultra-orthodox Salafi allies, however, are convinced they can win the referendum by mobilising their own supporters and the millions of Egyptians weary of political turmoil and disruption.

“There is no place for dictatorship,” the president said on Thursday while the constituent assembly was still voting on a constitution which Islamists say enshrines Egypt’s new freedoms.

Human rights groups have voiced misgivings, especially about articles related to women’s rights and freedom of speech.

The text limits the president to two four-year terms, requires him to secure parliamentary approval for his choice of prime minister, and introduces a degree of civilian oversight over the military - though not enough for critics.

The draft constitution also contains vague, Islamist-flavoured language that its opponents say could be used to whittle away human rights and stifle criticism.

For example, it forbids blasphemy and “insults to any person”, does not explicitly uphold women’s rights and demands respect for “religion, traditions and family values”.

The draft injects new Islamic references into Egypt’s system of government but retains the previous constitution’s reference to “the principles of sharia” as the main source of legislation.

“We fundamentally reject the referendum and constituent assembly because the assembly does not represent all sections of society,” said Sayed el-Erian, 43, a protester in Tahrir and member of a party set up by opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei.

Several independent newspapers said they would not publish on Tuesday in protest. One of the papers also said three private satellite channels would halt broadcasts on Wednesday.

Egypt cannot hold a new parliamentary election until a new constitution is passed. The country has been without an elected legislature since a court ordered the dissolution of the Islamist-dominated lower house in June.