{{Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy backed down Saturday in a political crisis marked by weeks of street protests, after the powerful army gave an ultimatum to him and the opposition to hold talks.}}<\/p>\n
But the initial signs were that his concession would not satisfy an increasingly fierce opposition.<\/p>\n
The Islamist leader annulled a controversial decree issued last month that put his decisions beyond judicial review \u2014 a move denounced as a dictatorial “power grab” by the opposition, but one which Morsy had defended as necessary to protect reforms.<\/p>\n
“The constitutional decree is annulled from this moment,” Selim al-Awa, an Islamist politician and adviser to Morsy, told a news conference after a meeting between the president and other political leaders.<\/p>\n
But Awa said an equally contentious referendum on a new constitution would go ahead as planned on December 15. <\/p>\n
The president was legally bound under the constitution to maintain that date and had no choice, he said.<\/p>\n
Awa added that if the draft constitution were rejected, a new one would be drawn up by officials elected by the people, rather than ones chosen by parliament as for the current text.<\/p>\n
The draft constitution has been criticised for its potential to weaken human rights and the rights of women, and out of fear it would usher in Islamic interpretation of laws.<\/p>\n
The two issues \u2014 the decree and the referendum \u2014 were at the heart of the anti-Morsy protests that turned violent last week, with clashes on Wednesday that killed seven people and wounded hundreds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy backed down Saturday in a political crisis marked by weeks of street protests, after the powerful army gave an ultimatum to him and the opposition to hold talks.}} But the initial signs were that his concession would not satisfy an increasingly fierce opposition. The Islamist leader annulled a controversial decree issued […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-4553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4553"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=4553"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=4553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}