100,000 protest at Egypt’s presidential palace

Egypt­ian pro­test­ers chant anti Mus­lim Broth­er­hood slo­gans dur­ing a demon­stra­tion in front of the pres­i­den­tial palace, seen in the back­ground Tues­day in Cairo, Egypt. A protest by tens of thou­sands of Egyp­tians out­side the pres­i­den­tial palace in Cairo turned vio­lent on Tues­day as ten­sions grew over Islamist Pres­i­dent Mohammed Morsi’s seizure of nearly unre­stricted pow­ers and a draft con­sti­tu­tion hur­riedly adopted by his allies. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Nasser Nasser)

AYA BATRAWY

HAMZA HENDAWI

Asso­ci­ated Press

CAIRO — More than 100,000 Egyp­tians protested out­side the pres­i­den­tial palace in Cairo on Tues­day, fuel­ing ten­sions over Islamist leader Mohammed Morsi’s seizure of nearly unre­stricted pow­ers and the adop­tion by his allies of a con­tro­ver­sial draft constitution.

The out­pour­ing of anger across the Egypt­ian cap­i­tal, the Mediter­ranean port of Alexan­dria and a string of other cities pointed to a pro­longed stand­off between the pres­i­dent and a newly united opposition.

Morsi’s oppo­nents, long frac­tured by bick­er­ing and com­pet­ing egos, have been re-energized since he announced decrees last month that place him above over­sight of any kind, includ­ing by the courts, and pro­vide immu­nity to two key bod­ies dom­i­nated by his allies: The 100-member panel draft­ing the con­sti­tu­tion and parliament’s upper chamber.

The decrees have led to charges that Morsi’s pow­ers turned him into a “new pharaoh.”

The large turnout in Tuesday’s protests — dubbed “The Last Warn­ing” by orga­niz­ers — sig­naled sus­tained momen­tum for the oppo­si­tion, which brought out at least 200,000 pro­test­ers to Cairo’s Tahrir Square a week ago and a com­pa­ra­ble num­ber on Fri­day to demand that Morsi rescind the decrees.

The huge scale of the protests have dealt a blow to the legit­i­macy of the new con­sti­tu­tion, which Morsi’s oppo­nents con­tend allows reli­gious author­i­ties too much influ­ence over leg­is­la­tion, threat­ens to restrict free­dom of expres­sion and opens the door to Islamist con­trol over day-to-day life.

What the revived oppo­si­tion has yet to make clear is what it will do next: cam­paign for a “no” vote on the draft con­sti­tu­tion in a nation­wide ref­er­en­dum set for Dec. 15, or call on Egyp­tians to boy­cott the vote.

Already, the country’s pow­er­ful judges have said they will not take on their cus­tom­ary role of over­see­ing the vote, thus rob­bing it of much of its legitimacy.

Morsi was in the pres­i­den­tial palace con­duct­ing busi­ness as usual as the pro­test­ers gath­ered out­side. He left for home through a back door as the crowds con­tin­ued to swell, accord­ing to a pres­i­den­tial offi­cial who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because he was not autho­rized to speak to the media.

The offi­cial said Morsi left on the advice of secu­rity offi­cials to head off “pos­si­ble dan­gers” and to calm the pro­test­ers. Morsi’s spokesman, how­ever, said the pres­i­dent left the palace at the end of his nor­mal work day, through the door he rou­tinely uses.

The protest was peace­ful except for a brief out­burst when police used tear gas to pre­vent demon­stra­tors from remov­ing a bar­ri­cade topped with barbed wire and con­verg­ing on the palace.

Soon after, with the pres­i­dent gone, the police aban­doned their lines and the pro­test­ers surged ahead to reach the palace walls. But there were no attempts to storm the palace, guarded inside by the army’s Repub­li­can Guard.

Pro­test­ers also com­man­deered two police vans, climb­ing atop the armored vehi­cles to jubi­lantly wave Egypt’s red, white and black flag and chant against Morsi. The pro­test­ers later min­gled freely with the black-clad riot police, as more and more peo­ple flocked to the area to join the demonstration.

The pro­test­ers cov­ered most of the palace walls with anti-Morsi graf­fiti and waved giant ban­ners car­ry­ing images of rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies killed in ear­lier protests. “Down with the regime” and “No to Morsi,” they wrote on the walls.

“He isn’t the pres­i­dent of all Egyp­tians, only of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood,” said pro­tester Mariam Met­wally, a post­grad­u­ate stu­dent of inter­na­tional law. “We don’t feel like he is our president.”

A giant poster embla­zoned with an image of Morsi wear­ing a Pharaonic crown was hoisted between two street light posts out­side the pres­i­den­tial palace. “Down with the pres­i­dent. No to the con­sti­tu­tion,” it declared.

“The scene at Iti­hadiya palace is a stab at the president’s legit­i­macy and his con­sti­tu­tional dec­la­ra­tion,” oppo­si­tion leader Hamdeen Sabahi told a pri­vate TV net­work. “The scene sends a mes­sage to the pres­i­dent that he is run­ning out of time.”

The mas­sive gath­er­ing was rem­i­nis­cent of the one out­side the palace on Feb. 11, 2011 — the day author­i­tar­ian pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak stepped down in the face of an 18-day upris­ing that ended his 29-year regime.

Shouts of “Erhal! Erhal!” — Ara­bic for “Leave! Leave!” — and “The peo­ple want to top­ple the regime!” rose up from the crowd, the same chants used against Mubarak. This time, though, they were directed at his suc­ces­sor, Egypt’s first demo­c­ra­t­i­cally elected president.

“The same way we brought down Mubarak in 18 days, we can bring down Morsi in less,” Ziad Oleimi, a promi­nent rights activist, told the crowds using a loudspeaker.

In Alexan­dria, some 10,000 oppo­nents of Morsi gath­ered in the cen­ter of the country’s second-largest metrop­o­lis, chant­ing slo­gans against the leader and his Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ist group, the Mus­lim Brotherhood.

The protests fueled Egypt’s worst polit­i­cal cri­sis since Mubarak’s ouster, with the coun­try clearly divided into two camps: Morsi, his Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and their ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive Islamist allies, ver­sus an oppo­si­tion made up of youth groups, lib­eral par­ties and large sec­tors of the public.

Tens of thou­sands also gath­ered in Cairo’s down­town Tahrir Square, miles away from the palace, to join sev­eral hun­dred who have been camp­ing out there for nearly two weeks. There were other large protests around the city.

Smaller protests by Morsi oppo­nents were staged in the Islamist strong­hold of Assiut, as well as in Suez, Luxor, Aswan, Daman­hour and the indus­trial city of Mahal­lah, north of Cairo.

“Free­dom or we die,” chanted a crowd of sev­eral hun­dred out­side a mosque in Cairo’s Abbasiyah dis­trict. “Mohammed Morsi, ille­git­i­mate! Broth­er­hood, ille­git­i­mate!” they yelled.

Ear­lier Tues­day, sev­eral hun­dred pro­test­ers also gath­ered out­side Morsi’s res­i­dence in an upscale sub­urb. “Down with the sons of dogs. We are the power and we are the peo­ple,” they chanted.

Morsi, who nar­rowly won the pres­i­dency in a June elec­tion, appeared to be in no mood for compromise.

A state­ment by his office said he met Tues­day with his deputy, his prime min­is­ter and sev­eral top Cab­i­net mem­bers to dis­cuss prepa­ra­tions for the ref­er­en­dum. The state­ment sug­gested busi­ness as usual at the palace, despite the mass rally out­side its doors.

Asked why Morsi did not address the crowds, Mus­lim Broth­er­hood spokesman Mah­moud Gho­zlan said the pro­test­ers were “rude” and included “thugs and drug addicts.”

The Islamists responded to the mass oppo­si­tion protests last week by send­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of sup­port­ers into Cairo’s twin city of Giza on Sat­ur­day and across much of the coun­try. Thou­sands also besieged Egypt’s high­est court, the Supreme Con­sti­tu­tional Court.

The court had been widely expected to declare the con­sti­tu­tional assem­bly that passed the draft char­ter ille­git­i­mate and to dis­band parliament’s upper house, the Shura Coun­cil. Instead, the judges went on strike after they found their build­ing under siege by protesters.

Morsi’s Nov. 22 decrees were fol­lowed last week by the con­sti­tu­tional panel rush­ing through the draft con­sti­tu­tion in a marathon, all-night ses­sion with­out the par­tic­i­pa­tion of lib­eral and Chris­t­ian mem­bers. Only four women, all Islamists, attended the session.

The char­ter has been crit­i­cized for not pro­tect­ing the rights of women and minor­ity groups, and many jour­nal­ists see it as restrict­ing free­dom of expres­sion. Crit­ics also say it empow­ers Islamic reli­gious cler­ics by giv­ing them a say over leg­is­la­tion, while some arti­cles were seen as tai­lored to get rid of the Islamists’ enemies.

Posted by AP News on Dec 4 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.