Cairo - Thousands of supporters of
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi have gathered here as political violence
continued to worsen across the country, with at least two people killed in the
northern city of Alexandria.
Clashes broke out on Friday between pro-
and anti-government protesters in Alexandria's Sidi Gaber neighbourhood,
outside the local headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice
Party (FJP).
Local health officials said that two
people were killed, one of them an American citizen who was stabbed, the other
an Egyptian who died from gunshot wounds. Police said the American was taking
photographs of the fighting, but was not believed to be a journalist.
Protesters also set fire to the party's offices.
Violent clashes were reported in
several other governorates; at least one person was killed early on Friday
morning in Sharqiya, in the Nile Delta region, after protesters attacked the
FJP offices there.
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| Egypt's Islamist PM Morsi promoted by the left-wing Time Magazine. |
The rallies in Cairo remained calm, but
tensions are clearly running high ahead of nationwide anti-government protests
planned for Sunday. On the outskirts of the pro-Morsi rally, rows of men armed
with batons and metal rods checked IDs and frisked attendees.
A senior scholar from Al-Azhar, Egypt's
highest Sunni religious authority, warned of worsening violence which he blamed
on "criminal gangs". "Vigilance is required to ensure we do not
slide into civil war," said Hassan el-Shafei, in remarks carried by state
media.
Sunday's protests, which organisers hope will draw millions of Egyptians
to the streets, will demand that Morsi resign and cede power to a transitional
government. The rally on Friday was intended as a preemptive strike, a chance
for organisers to show that Morsi still commands majority support.
"Don't believe that everyone is
against the president," said Naeem Ghanem, carrying banners accusing the
opposition of working with the United States and Israel. "Ninety percent
of the people are with Morsi."
The rally was dubbed "legitimacy
is a red line," and demonstrators kept returning to that theme, arguing
that the only way to remove the democratically-elected president is through the
ballot box. Sunday will mark the end of the first year of Morsi's four-year
term.
"I'm here to defend my voice. If
you want Morsi to leave, that's fine, but after four years," said Taher
Mohamed, manning a stall and selling pro-Morsi gear at the rally. “I'm here to
defend my voice. If you want Morsi to leave, that's fine, but after four years.”
Protesters railed against popular media
figures like satirist Bassem Youssef, accusing them of taking money from
Western countries and misrepresenting Morsi's record. They also mocked a grassroots campaign which claims to have
collected signatures from 18 million people demanding Morsi’s resignation, a
figure which, if accurate, would overshadow the 13 million votes that brought
him to power.
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| Pro-Islamist Morsi rally in Cairo. |
The campaign is called
"Tamarod," or "rebellion," and hundreds of their supporters
gathered across town in Tahrir Square on Friday, waving red cards to symbolise
their demand for Morsi's ouster.
But many of Morsi’s supporters dismiss
it as a fraud, a vehicle for former president Hosni Mubarak's regime to regain
power, and claim to have met people who signed the petition dozens of times.
They have launched their own version, naming it "Tagarod," or
"emptiness," and handed out signature forms at Friday's rally.
"But you can only sign it once! We
will be watching," one campaigner joked, handing forms to a group of
women.
"[The opposition] can oppose
[Morsi] within the normal democratic process," said Diaa Agha, a senior
member of the FJP's office in Cairo. "But unfortunately they refused all
kinds of democracy. They want to overthrow legitimacy by doing illegal acts
like the Tamarod campaign."
Demonstrators were largely supporters
of the Brotherhood or of other Islamist parties, like the Building and
Development Party, the political wing of the once-banned Gamaa al-Islamiyya. But
the rally also attracted a number of people who described themselves as
political independents.
"We didn't overthrow Mubarak
because he was corrupt. We did it because there was no democracy," said
Ismail Farid, a retired air force colonel attending the protest, who insisted
that he was not an Islamist. "And now the opposition, a minority in our
country, wants thugs to remove our president."
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| General Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. |
The Egyptian military was in
control of Egypt for nearly sixty years at the time that Hosni Mubarak was
forced to step aside after a month long series of protests against his rule.
During those protests, the
military mostly stayed on the sidelines rather than get directly involved,
although there are strong indications that it was the military that in the end
it was the military that persuaded Mubarak to step aside rather than let the
protests get any worse.
In the months that followed,
there was rather open disagreement between the military council that had taken
control of the country in Mubarak’s absence and the civilian government that
was slowly starting to form, including several occasions last year when it
appeared as though an open break was going to take place.
Since then, though, the military
has largely allowed the new civilian government to proceed without getting
involved. Now, though, there are signs that this may be about to change:
Egypt’s army chief warned on
Sunday that the military is ready to intervene to stop the nation from entering
a “dark tunnel” of internal conflict.
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| Egyptian army tanks just outside Cairo ready to move in. |
Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi spoke
a week ahead of mass protests planned by opponents of Islamist President
Mohammed Morsi. There are fears the demonstrations calling for Morsi’s ouster
will descend into violence after some of the president’s hard-line supporters
vowed to “smash” them. Others declared protesters were infidels who deserve to
be killed.
El-Sissi’s comments were his
first in public on the planned June 30 protests. Made to officers during a
seminar, they reflected the military’s frustration with the rule of Morsi,
Egypt’s first freely elected president who completes one year in office on June
30.
His comments, posted on the
military’s Facebook page, could add pressure on Morsi as he braces for the
protests after he spent his first year in office struggling with a host of
problems that he is widely perceived to have failed to effectively tackle, like
surging crime, rising prices, fuel shortages, power cuts and unemployment.
El-Sissi also appeared to lower
the threshold for what warrants intervention by the military. Earlier he cited
collapse or near collapse of the state.
He said that while the military
has recently stayed out the political fray and focused instead on its combat
capabilities, its patriotic and moral responsibility toward Egyptians obliges
it to intervene and stop Egypt from “slipping into a dark tunnel of conflict,
internal fighting.” He said sectarian violence and the collapse of state
institutions would also justify intervention.
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| More Egyptian army tanks coming into Cairo. |
He urged all parties to use the
week left before the June 30 protests to reach a “genuine” understanding to
defuse the crisis. “We have a week during which a great deal can be achieved.
This is a call that is only motivated by love of the nation, its presence and
future.”
“Those who think that we (the
military) are oblivious to the dangers that threaten the Egyptian state are
mistaken. We will not remain silent while the country slips into a conflict
that will be hard to control,” he said.
In a thinly veiled warning to
Morsi’s hard-line backers, el-Sissi said: “It is not honorable that we remain
silent in the face of the terrorizing and scaring of our Egyptian compatriots.
There is more honor in death than watching a single
Things have not gone well for
President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in their first year in power. The
Egyptian economy remains as bad as it was under Mubarak, few of the social
issues that brought people to the streets in February 2011 have been addressed
and, perhaps most importantly, the sectarian violence that was kept under wraps
during the Mubarak years has flared up, especially in previously peaceful areas
like the Sinai Peninsula.
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| Egypt's PM Morsi and army chief General el-Sissi. |
The fact that the military is
starting to flexing its muscle again given these conditions is not at all
surprising and, indeed, it comes at a time when the Morsi regime is in an
arguably weakened position:
Fortunately for the military
brass, Egypt is such a mess and the Brotherhood (kept out of power for more
than fifty years) was so unready for prime time, that the longer the Islamists
stay in power, the worse off the country becomes and the less popularity they
have.
There was never much chance that
the Islamists would match their Turkish colleagues’ success. In Egypt, the
risks are all the other way. Egypt could end up looking more like Pakistan
where a secure military presides over a ruined country than like Turkey where
the military has been for now at least swept aside.
Back when Morsi and the
Brotherhood were riding high, the military stepped back from politics. Now, the
government is floundering and many Egyptians are less sure that getting rid of
the old authoritarian system was such a great idea.
What the military probably wants
is a return to an authoritarian presidential republic in which a strong ruler
backed by the soldiers keeps Egypt in order, balancing between the liberals and
the Islamists and quietly beating up dissidents who get too far out of line. At
this point, the ‘stability at any price’ party is getting stronger in Egypt by
the day.
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| A sexy Egyptian army officer ready to show Muslim Brotherhood's Islamists their place. |
None of this is to say that
there’s about to be a military coup in Egypt. Indeed, it’s likely that the
public would not support such a move at this time. However, it seems rather
clear that the military, under el-Sissi’s leadership, is prepared to step back
into politics in some respect even in a limited way.
Additionally, it’s likely meant
to be a reminder that, if necessary, the military isn’t going to allow him to
let his government’s apparent incompetence continue to drag the nation down.
I wouldn’t call it a rollback of
what happened in Tahrir Square two years ago, but it’s a strong reminder that
Egypt was an authoritarian regime for many decades before and that the
possibility that those days could return is still there.
If Morsi’s Egypt continues on the
past that it’s been on lately, many segments of the Egyptian public may not be
too upset about that.