Category: Rubrique

{{In scenes reminiscent of the mass demonstrations that brought about the downfall of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in early 2011, thousands of protestors have retaken to the streets in increasingly heated protests over the past two weeks.}}

Five people were killed and 446 injured in clashes between pro- and anti-Morsy demonstrators outside the presidential palace in Cairo, the Egyptian health ministry said Thursday, as tanks rolled into the area in an attempt to disperse protesters.

{{What’s behind the latest unrest?}}

The protests were sparked by a November 22 presidential decree issued by President Mohamed Morsy — the first freely elected leader of this country of 83 million — which prevented any court from overturning his decisions until a new, post-Mubarak constitution was passed.

The ruling has essentially given him unchecked power, protecting from judicial review any decisions he has made since assuming office.

{{What was Morsy’s rationale?}}

Insisting the order is temporary — it will last only until a new constitution is put in place — Morsy claimed the move was intended to safeguard the revolution. He said the edict would only apply to “sovereign” matters.

In particular, Morsy said, the edict was aimed at preventing interference from the courts in the work of Egypt’s Constituent Assembly, the body charged with drafting a new constitution.

The judges, many of whom were holdover loyalists from the government of Mubarak, are widely viewed as hostile to the Islamists who now dominate the assembly that has been charged with framing a new constitution. Some had threatened to shut down the assembly.

Morsy’s move, which has concentrated power in the hands of the executive, is a continuation of the power struggles between Morsy’s Muslim Brotherhood — the Islamist movement that is Egypt’s most powerful political force and won nearly half the seats in parliamentary elections — and the remnants of the military-dominated establishment of the Mubarak years.

In June, just weeks before Morsy’s election, Egypt’s military leaders declared parliament invalid and dissolved the body, a ruling which was upheld by Egypt’s highest court in September. After his election, Morsy defied the military leadership by calling parliament into session. Morsy’s edict ruled out the possibility of repeat interference.

In August, the president moved decisively against the military leadership, sending into retirement Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi — who, as Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, had acted as the country’s de facto ruler in the wake of Mubarak’s ouster and prior to Morsy’s election.

{{What has been the response to the presidential decree?}}

Morsy’s decree has sharply divided Egyptians. While the Muslim Brotherhood is standing by their man, holding large rallies to show support, many other Egyptians have seen the order as an alarming and undemocratic power grab — a lurch back towards an authoritarian style of leadership the country had only recently overthrown.

Left-leaning and liberal Egyptians — who had played a large part in the revolution but were sidelined by the success of Islamists in subsequent elections — made up a large component of the protestors in Tahrir Square. Many of their chants accused Morsy, the first democratically elected president, of becoming a “new pharaoh” and “dictator.”

“In some ways, the liberal and left-wing forces are trying to stake a claim to the revolution again through the protests,” Laleh Khalili, a reader in politics at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, told CNN.

The demonstrators, who have been calling on Morsy to resign, also included some of those sympathetic to the military and the old regime, she said.

{{Why has this come about now?}}

Morsy issued his edict the day after the November 21 cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, which he had played a central role in brokering.

Khalili said that, buoyed with new found political capital from his successful foray on the international stage, the Egyptian president may have miscalculated, underestimating the level of outrage his actions would provoke.

The anger on the streets, she said, also reflected a level of public dissatisfaction with progress made since the revolution in addressing issues of poverty and inequality in a country with an unemployment rate of more than 12%, a median age of about 24 years, and a per capita GDP of $6,500.

“Many of the original grievances behind the revolution were derived from questions around extreme inequality and corruption,” she said. “Those issues have not been addressed.”

The protests represented “a perfect storm of many grievances coming to the fore,” she said, and it was not clear how it would play out. “It’s a fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of the regime.”

{{What else was in the declaration?}}

Other aspects of Morsy’s edict are likely to prove popular with many of those who have taken to the streets against him.

In his decree, Morsy also announced that all deaths and violence connected to the uprising against Mubarak would be investigated again, with those responsible retried if necessary.

This raised the possibility that Mubarak, currently serving a life prison term, could be re-prosecuted, along with a number of regime figures who were previously acquitted.

Some Egyptians have expressed disappointment that security forces and officials have escaped punishment over last year’s violent crackdown on protestors.

Morsy also sacked the prosecutor-general in his declaration, and extended the timeline for drafting the constitution by two months.

But while those resolutions may be welcomed by many, the unilateral manner in which Morsy has gone about expanding his powers has alarmed many.

“It’s the way he’s doing it that has gotten people upset, because it reminds them of the way Mubarak used to govern,” Peter Jones, a Middle East expert at the University of Ottawa, told CNN.

One popular slogan during the current protests has been “Morsy is Mubarak.”

{{If Morsy’s new powers are only temporary, why the outrage?}}

Even if Morsy is good to his word and rescinds the decree after the new constitution is enacted, protesters claim he has used the edict to hijack the process in order to produce a document that reflects his Islamist vision and consolidates his power in the new Egypt.

Liberal, left-wing and Christian members of assembly boycotted the body over concerns that their views were not being given enough consideration by Islamists — with many of them subsequently replaced by Islamists.

{{What is happening with the constitution now?}}

The Islamist-dominated assembly has now passed a finalized 234-article draft of the constitution, which is due to go for a public vote on December 15.

But there has been sharp opposition to the document, with critics fearing it could lead to excessive restrictions on certain rights, and objecting to the way it was drafted.

“(Morsy) put to referendum a draft constitution that undermines basic freedoms & violates universal values,” wrote Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel laureate and head of the liberal Constitution Party, on his Twitter account. “The struggle will continue.”

Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said that “moving a flawed and contradictory draft to a vote is not the right way to guarantee fundamental rights or to promote respect for the rule of law.”

The draft constitution maintains the principles of sharia as the main source of legislation — a position unchanged from the constitution under Mubarak.

But Mohamed Naeem, a member of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, said he fears the proposed constitution would open the way for a theocracy by moving the country even closer to codifying sharia law.

The United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, urged Morsy to reconsider the draft, saying a number of measures contained in it are incompatible with international human rights law. She called them “not yet sufficient.”

{{Where is it all going?}}

Morsy’s power struggles with the judiciary have continued to escalate, with Islamist protesters surrounding the country’s supreme constitutional court at the weekend and forcing it to suspend its sessions indefinitely.

The court had been due to rule on the validity of the constitutional assembly tasked with drafting the constitution, but the judges were unable to enter the court premises.

In subsequent days, anti-Morsy protestors turned the tables, conducting mass demonstrations outside the presidential palace and forcing the president to leave through a back door.

Independent newspapers and television stations have also made a stand against Morsy and the draft constitution, falling silent for two days in protest, while Egypt’s highest religious authority, Al Azhar, has urged the president to postpone the December 15 referendum on the new constitution. Five of the president’s advisers have resigned over the crisis.

ElBaradei has said opposition leaders are prepared to holds talks with Morsy if he withdraws his power-grabbing decree and delays the referendum.

But Morsy’s administration has said the referendum will proceed as scheduled, while the Muslim Brotherhood has blamed opposition leaders for escalating the violence.

{first Published by CNN}

{{Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi struck an uncompromising stand Monday over his seizure of near absolute powers, refusing in a meeting with top judicial authorities to rescind a package of constitutional amendments that placed his edicts above oversight by the courts. }}

Morsi’s supporters, meanwhile, canceled a massive rally planned for Tuesday to compete with a demonstration by his opponents, citing the need to “defuse tension” at a time when anger over the president‘s moves is mounting, according to a spokesman for the president’s Muslim Brotherhood.

The opposition rally was going ahead as scheduled at Cairo’s Tahrir square, birthplace of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak’s regime nearly two years ago.

The meeting between Morsi and members of the Supreme Judiciary Council was a bid to resolve a four-day crisis that has plunged the country into a new round of turmoil, with clashes between the two sides that have left one protester dead and hundreds wounded.

Morsi, according to a presidential statement, told the judges that while the constitutional declaration he announced Thursday grants him immunity from any oversight, he intended to restrict that to what it described as “sovereignty issues.”

The vaguely worded statement did not define those issues, but they were widely interpreted to cover declaration of war, imposition of martial law, breaking diplomatic relations with a foreign nation or dismissing a Cabinet.

The statement did not touch on the protection from oversight Morsi has extended to two bodies dominated by his Brotherhood and other Islamists: The 100-member panel tasked with drafting a new constitution and parliament’s mostly toothless lower chamber, or the Shura council.

The Shura Council does not have lawmaking authorities but, in the absence of the more powerful lower chamber, the People’s Assembly, it is the only popularly elected body where the Brotherhood and other Islamists have a majority. The People’s Assembly was dissolved by a court ruling in June.

The judiciary has pushed back, calling the decrees a power grab and an “assault” on the branch’s independence. Judges and prosecutors stayed away from many courts in Cairo and elsewhere on Sunday and Monday.

A spokesman, Yasser Ali, said Morsi told the judges that he acted within his rights as the nation’s sole source of legislation, assuring them that the decrees were temporary and did not in any way infringe on the judiciary.

Two prominent rights lawyers — Gamal Eid and Ahmed Ragheb — dismissed Ali’s remarks.

Eid said they were designed to keep “Morsi above the law,” while Ragheb said they amounted to “playing with words.”

“This is not what Egyptians are objecting to and protesting about,” Ragheb said. “If the president wanted to resolve the crisis, there should be an amendment to his constitutional declaration.”

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke Monday by telephone with Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr to “register American concerns about Egypt‘s political situation,”according to spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

Clinton stressed that the U.S. wanted to “see the constitutional process move forward in a way that does not overly concentrate power in one set of hands, that ensures that rule of law, checks and balances, protection of the rights of all groups in Egypt are upheld,” Nuland said.

Morsi’s aides have repeatedly emphasized that the president has no intention of amending his decrees, meaning the near absolute powers they give him will stand.

Morsi also issued a law to “protect the revolution” that rights activists maintain is effectively a declaration of emergency laws designed to combat poorly defined threats to the nation or to public order.

Opposition activists have denounced Morsi’s decrees as a blatant power grab, and refused to enter a dialogue with the president before the edicts are rescinded.

Morsi says he wants to retain the new powers until the new constitution is adopted in a nationwide referendum and parliamentary elections are held, a time line that stretches to the middle of next year.

Many members of the judiciary were appointed under Mubarak, drawing allegations, even by some of Morsi’s critics, that they are trying to perpetuate the regime‘s corrupt practices.

But opponents are angry that the decrees leave Morsi without any check on his power.

Morsi, who became Egypt’s first freely elected president in June, was quoted by Ali as telling his prime minister and security chiefs earlier Monday that his decrees were designed to “end the transitional period as soon as possible.”

The dispute is the latest crisis to roil the Arab world’s most populous nation, which has faced mass protests, a rise in crime and economic woes since the initial euphoria following the popular uprising that ousted Mubarak after nearly 30 years of autocratic rule.

Morsi’s decrees were motivated in part by a court ruling in June that dissolved parliament‘s more powerful lower chamber, the People’s Assembly, which was dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and ultraconservative Islamists.

The verdict meant that legislative authority first fell in the hands of the then-ruling military, but Morsi grabbed it in August after he ordered the retirement of the army‘s two top generals.

Morsi’s decrees saved the constitutional panel and the upper chamber from a fate similar to that of the People’s Assembly because several courts looking into the legal basis of their creation were scheduled to issue verdicts to disband them.

Secular and Christian politicians have withdrawn from the 100-seat panel tasked with drafting the charter to protest what they call the hijacking of the process by Morsi’s Islamist allies.

They fear the Islamists will produce a draft that infringes on the rights of liberals, women and the minority Christians.

The dispute over the decrees has taken a toll on the nation‘s already ailing economy. Egypt’s benchmark stock index dropped more than 9.5 percentage points on Sunday, the first day of trading since Morsi’s announcement. It fell again Monday during early trading but recovered to close up 2.6 percentage points.

It has also played out in street protests across the country.

Thousands gathered in Damanhoor for the funeral procession of 15-year-old Islam Abdel-Maksoud, who was killed Sunday when a group of anti-Morsi protesters tried to storm the local offices of the political arm of the Brotherhood, Egypt’s most powerful political group.

The Health Ministry said 444 people have been wounded nationwide, including 49 who remain hospitalized, since the clashes erupted on Friday, according to a statement carried by the official news agency MENA.

Morsi’s office said that he had ordered the country’s top prosecutor to investigate the teenager’s death, along with that of another young man shot in Cairo last week during demonstrations to mark the anniversary of deadly protests last year that called for an end to the then-ruling military.

Up to 10,000 people marched through Tahrir Square for the funeral procession of 16-year-old Gaber Salah, who died Sunday of head wounds suffered in clashes with police.

Salah was a member of April 6, one of the key rights groups behind the anti-Mubarak uprising, and a founder of a Facebook group called “Against the Muslim Brotherhood.”

{Wirestory}