Opposed to President's Power Expansion, Thousands Break Through Cordon; Morsi Leaves for Suburb, Spokesman Says
CAIRO—Tens of thousands of Egyptians tore through cordons of barbed wire and riot police and surged against the gates of the Presidential Palace in Cairo on Tuesday, as anger mounted over what they called a power grab by the country's Islamist president. |
Anti-Morsi protesters rally outside the Presidential Palace Tuesday night. After breaking through a cordon earlier in the day, they remained just outside the walls late into the night. |
The crowd remained into the early hours Wednesday, with protesters massed at the palace wall and police stationed inside, echoing a standoff that pits Egypt's ruling Islamists against nearly every other political force over the country's hastily drafted constitution and President Mohammed Morsi's recent decree granting himself nearly unrestricted powers.
Tens of thousands of protesters filled Cairo's central Tahrir Square earlier Tuesday and marched through the coast city of Alexandria. But it was the march on the palace, the largest such gathering since the uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak early last year, that seemed to bring Egyptian politics to a dangerous crossroads.
"We woke up one day and found a very radical Islamic situation," said Walid Ahmed, a 37-year-old engineer protesting outside the palace. "The president is pushing us toward civil war."With protesters threatening to storm the palace walls for the first time in recent Egyptian history, Mr. Morsi left the palace for his home in a remote Cairo suburb, according to a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman.
Each camp in the showdown sent mixed messages, beginning with defiant statements swearing off compromise. Ahmed Kamel, a spokesman for an alliance of opposition parties leading the outcry against Mr. Morsi, said there would be no talks or compromise until Mr. Morsi canceled his controversial decree. Brotherhood spokesman Gehad al-Haddad said his movement's rank and file "are boiling angry" at the opposition, which he characterized as ex-regime loyalists trying to hijack the will of the people.
Yet there were also signs that some leaders on both sides were reaching for a way out.
Hours before Tuesday's march on the palace, opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei urged his supporters to confine their protests to Tahrir Square. The call went unheeded by many. Mr. Haddad said Mr. Morsi ordered riot police to avoid confronting protesters as much as possible.
 |
| Egyptian protesters chant anti-Muslim Brotherhood slogans during a rally in front of the presidential palace in Cairo. |
Late Tuesday, reports circulated in some Egyptian media outlets that Mr. Morsi was hunkered down with aides weighing a face-saving compromise. Ayman Seyad, a former adviser to Mr. Morsi who remains in close contact with Mr. Morsi's aides, said those aides told him Tuesday that Mr. Morsi was considering scrapping the most controversial parts of his decree.
The decree, issued Nov. 22, put nearly all state powers in Mr. Morsi's hands and placed the president above the judicial branch. It was one of the most sweeping expansions of executive powers in the modern Egyptian state. Coming just six months after the former Muslim Brotherhood leader narrowly won the country's first democratic presidential election, Mr. Morsi's decree appeared to confirm many Egyptians worst fears about Islamists.
In competing protests in recent days, both Islamists and their foes have mustered some of the largest crowds since the revolution. In Hurghada in the Red Sea region, anti-Morsi crowds beseiged a provincial government building, local media outlets reported.
At Cairo's Presidential Palace, legions of riot police who had formed barricades around the palace earlier in the day tried to fight off the crowds with truncheons and tear gas.
Some protesters choked on tear gas, gasping for air and vomiting into the gutter. Others danced on top of an armored personnel carrier seized from riot police and spray painted antigovernment slogans on it. Protesters took over guard posts and set up a makeshift stage on the back of a flatbed truck just outside the palace's main gate.
In Cairo's leafy Heliopolis neighborhood, protesters chanted many of the same slogans that echoed throughout Egypt during the uprising against Mr. Mubarak last year. "Leave means go! Morsi doesn't get it," went one chant.
As the number of protesters swelled into tens of thousands, riot police retreated behind the palace walls. The retreat appeared to calm violence, even as heavily armed legions of Egypt's elite presidential guards waited within the palace walls.
By late Tuesday, protest organizers shooed children off the gates, saying they don't aim to breach palace gates or walls. Crowds near the palace cheered some of the police. As midnight approached, protesters remained massed outside the palace, whose walls were covered with fresh graffiti against the edict and rushed draft constitution.
Coming to the palace was crucial to prove to Mr. Morsi that many Egyptians were opposed to him and his Islamist allies, said Karim Assem, 33 years old. "The point is we exist, and they refuse to acknowledge this," he said.
Mr. Morsi has said his decree is temporary until a new constitution is drafted and approved in a popular referendum, which is currently slated for Dec. 15. The decree was necessary, he has said, to prevent judges still loyal to the old regime from derailing the country's democratic transition.
But at the time of the decree, the constitution-drafting process was unraveling because of tensions with non-Islamist representatives in the assembly tasked with writing the new document. Christians, seculars, liberals and other non-Islamist members—nearly a quarter of the drafting body—resigned, accusing the Islamists of ignoring their concerns. The assembly pressed on, drafting the document months ahead of schedule and just days after Mr. Morsi's decree.
But instead of expediting Egypt's transition, Mr. Morsi's decree and the rushed drafting of the constitution united Egypt's fractured opposition ranks more so than at any point since Mr. Mubarak's fall.
If Mr. Morsi stays his course, the crisis could escalate further; if he backs down, he may alienate his Islamist base and make it hard to regain the trust of non-Islamists.
"If he cancels the decree now, it might be political suicide for him," said Mr. Seyad, the former Morsi adviser. "And that still might not be enough to end the crisis."
However the crisis ends, Mr. Morsi looks likely to face a more polarized political environment. He also continues to face economic problems that demand unpopular policies, such as cutting subsidies and devaluing the currency, that would be easier to pass with broad support.
"The moment of crisis really comes if the bottom drops out under the economy," said Elijah Zarwan, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. "And then, my fear is, that economic unrest combined with a political atmosphere that has been poisoned by Morsi's recent moves, could combine to form really serious unrest."
Write to Charles Levinson at charles.levinson@wsj.com and Sam Dagher at sam.dagher@wsj.com
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323401904578158680760961970.html
No comments:
Post a Comment