Egyptians call for mass protest
Egyptian protesters, camping out in Cairo and other big cities, have called for a mass demonstration on Friday to press the country's military rulers to speed up promised reforms.
The Revolution's Youth Coalition, an opposition group, Thursday called on Egyptians to join in the demonstration dubbed the "Friday of the last ultimatum."
"All what the revolutionary powers want from the (ruling) Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, whom we hold in regard, is to quicken trials for former regime officials and others charged with killing protesters," said Amr Ezz, a member of the group.
"At the same time, trials for civilians at military courts should be stopped," he added.
Thousands of protesters have gone on an open-ended strike in Cairo's Tahrir Square and in Suez, a restive city east of Cairo, to push the military rulers to arrange public and swift trials for former president Hosny Mubarak and other former officials.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-e...forms-1.373188
Egyptian protesters seek removal of military council
* Army council says will support prime minister
* Egyptians chant against army council head Tantawi
* Prime minister promised reshuffle within a week
(Updates with protests, Amr Moussa comment)
By Shaimaa Fayed and Dina Zayed
CAIRO, July 12 (Reuters) - Thousands of Egyptians marched on the cabinet headquarters in central Cairo on Tuesday to demand the removal of the ruling military council.
The march, reminiscent of protests that forced President Hosni Mubarak to step down on Feb. 11, followed a warning by the military council that it would use all legitimate means to end a five-day-old protest in the city's Tahrir Square.
"Down, down with military rule," demonstrators chanted as they went from Tahrir Square towards the prime minister's office, where they demonstrated before returning to the square.
"The people want the removal of the Field Marshal," they shouted, referring to Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, the military council leader who served as Mubarak's defence minister for two decades.
The protest that began on Friday has increasingly targeted the generals running the country and is one of the longest since it took over from Mubarak following mass protests against rising prices, poverty, unemployment and years of authoritarian rule.
The protest and the possibility that the crisis could deepen have hit the Egyptian stock market, where the benchmark index closed down almost 3 percent at an eight-week low.
The protesters are angry about foot-dragging in trying Mubarak, who ruled the country of 80 million people for three decades, and officials charged with corruption and killing protesters. They also want swifter reforms.
Other protests have been taking place in the port cities of Alexandria and Suez, where some people gathered outside a Suez Canal administration building. An official said the canal was operating normally.
MILITARY COUNCIL WARNING
Mubarak, who is at a hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, is due to go on trial over the death of more than 840 protesters in the uprising on Aug. 3.
Prime Minister Essam Sharaf has been trying to appease the protesters by promising a cabinet reshuffle and ordering other changes in the Interior Ministry, but the demonstrators have rejected the proposals.
The military council said the protests were threatening public order and the country's security.
"The armed forces feels its historic responsibility and role towards the nation and calls on honourable citizens to stand against any protests that prevent the return of normal life," said a statement read by General Mohsen Fangary, a member of the military council.
The army has promised a parliamentary election in September with a presidential vote to follow.
Former Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, a presidential hopeful, said the protesters have legitimate demands.
"There is a gap between the revolution and the swiftness it was demanding and (there is a) delay on the other hand which creates a gap and leads to questioning whether the revolution took place and whether there was a radical change in the country or not," he told Al Jazeera television in an interview.
Protesters in Tahrir Square have blocked traffic and stopped employees entering a government administrative building on the edge of the square. Many rejected the army statement.
"The military council is following the same policies as the ousted regime," said Mohamed Abdel Waged, 43, who has joined those camping in Tahrir in tents and under big white canopies.
Eager to placate the crowds and restore order, the military said it would "work to end" the protest by all legal means.
The government said on Monday it would raise the minimum wage, another demand of the protesters.
In the most recent corruption trial, former Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, who investors had praised for economic liberalisation measures that fired up Egypt's
economy, was given a one-year suspended jail sentence.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most organised political group, had joined Friday's protest but said it would not continue.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...76B1MU20110712
Egyptian Parliamentary elections postponed to October or November: MENA
The Egyptian Parliament elections scheduled for September have been postponed till next October or November, state news agency reported on Wednesday.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english201...c_13983246.htm
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood struggles to contain cracks
The Muslim Brotherhood recently sacked several of its known youth leaders. While the main reason given for their expulsion is their formation of the new Egyptian Current party, not approved by the organisation, youth members say their dismissals have deeper roots. Tensions between factions of the Brotherhood youth and leadership were first exposed during the January 25 Revolution, when the group officially boycotted the call for a revolution while its youth insisted on participating.
After the ouster of Mubarak, this same group organised the first Muslim Brotherhood youth conference which was aired live on television and gathered hundreds to discuss different viewpoints of the organisation’s youth.
However, the expulsions currently undertaken by the organisation imply that differences are not fully tolerated. Osman says that while several of the youth believed that change should come from within the Brotherhood and tried to push for reform that would represent the younger members’ vision, the organisation proved it was not that flexible.
“It is not about joining a different party than the main Freedom and Justice Party. They were looking for an excuse to expel us. They see us as Abou El-Fotouh’s people. Our analysis is different and so is our vision. The Brotherhood does not believe in revolutionary change only reform and to them the revolution so far has given them all they needed which is legal recognition. We want complete change from below…from the roots,” says Osman.
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsCont...ntain-cra.aspx
Will Egypt's Military Hijack its Revolution?
the military had always been the foundation of a regime that had existed since 1952, when Lieutenant Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser led the Free Officers Movement in a coup that overthrew the monarchy. All of the presidents that have ruled Egypt since have come through the senior command echelon of the military. Even while he appointed his generals, former Air Force commander Mubarak was reminded in February that he ruled at their pleasure. And the junta that replaced him is hardly some contemporary iteration of the Free Officers; it's led by his former Defense Secretary Field Marshal Muhammad Tantawi, and comprised of the same officer echelon that answered to Mubarak.
Last winter's revolutionary crisis prompted the generals to oust Mubarak in order to restore stability and
protect their own vital institutional interests -- from the military's massive stake in the civilian economy and its $1.5 billion annual U.S. stipend for keeping the peace with Israel, to the legitimacy required for it to play its central role in society.
The junta's immediate goal was to
quell the rebellion, even while proclaiming themselves "guardians of the revolution" -- of which they now claim to have been co-authors. The military has discouraged, sometimes violently, further protest and strike action, and more than 7,000 Egyptians have been detained -- with many credible reports of torture -- since Mubarak's ouster.
Some arms of the state security system have been reorganized and renamed, and some officials have been ousted or prosecuted. But there's hardly been any kind of wholesale remaking of Mubarak's security structures to serve the needs of a democratic society; instead, there are gestures to appease popular anger.
Postponing the election may have angered the Muslim Brotherhood, which would likely prevail at the polls, but it's in keeping with the wishes of the liberal parties, who fear being trounced by the far better organized and more popular Islamists if the voting were held in the fall.
http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/201...ts-revolution/
Egypt's generals accused of subverting revolution
Egypt's generals were accused of subverting the country's pro-democracy revolution on Thursday after they banned international observers from monitoring a vital parliamentary election to be held this autumn.
"The previous regime used to try to convince us that foreign observers were enemies and spies and now the military are promoting the same idea," said Sherif Etman of the Egyptian Organisation of Human Rights.
"But the fact is that if international observers are not allowed, the electoral process as a whole will not be fair or transparent."
Egypt's military chiefs insist that they are attempting to institute genuine reforms, pointing to the fact that the elections will now be managed by independent judges rather than the hated interior ministry.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...evolution.html
Egypt's new cabinet sworn in
Egypt's new ministers took the oath of office in front of Hussein Tantawi, head of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, on Thursday, official MENA news agency reported.
There were 14 new members in the cabinet. Ministers of foreign affairs, finance, health, industry and trade, religious endowment, civil aviation, military production, higher education, communications, transport, agriculture, irrigation, local development and public enterprises were newly appointed.
"The change with the government doesn't satisfy us, firstly because he ignores key demands, which are the dismissal of justice and interior ministers and the general prosecutor. Secondly, because he appointed new more questionable ministers, so he has done nothing," Ramy Swissy, spokesman of the April 6 youth movement, told Xinhua.
"Essam Sharaf who joined the sit-in with us in Tahrir Square during Jan. 25 revolution is no longer revolutionary, as he has become fully directed by the supreme council," 25-year-old protestor Marwa Ahmed told Xinhua.
Egypt's revolution alliance also said on Thursday it will continue the sit-ins in Tahrir Square and other squares in all Egyptian governorates until the Mubarak-era policies are changed, MENA reported.
New electoral law unwelcome across Egypt's political spectrum
"Half of the seats of each house will be elected via individual candidacy, while the other half will come through the party-list," said Shahin, indicating that "two parties are allowed to compete in the election under one list."
He said each party must achieve a threshold of half a per cent of the vote in order to be eligible to join parliament.
"This is far less than the 1980s’ 8 per cent or the earlier proposed 2 per cent threshold, making it much easier for all parties to join parliament,” said Shahin.
The mix of two election systems, however, goes against the will of the majority of political parties, headed by the liberal-oriented Wafd and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party. Both insist that the individual candidacy process be scrapped and the party-list system adopted entirely.
According to Nour, most political parties think the individual candidacy system was largely responsible for the proliferation of election fraud, irregularities, vote-buying and acts of thuggery wintessed during ousted President Hosni Mubarak's era.
"The maintenance of this system could help bring back to parliament most of the officials and corrupt businessmen of Mubarak’s defunct ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) who corrupted [Egypt's] political life," argues Nour.
Much to the dismay of most political parties – especially liberal-oriented ones -- Shahin announced that the two laws will respect the 47-year-old principle that 50 per cent of seats in parliament be reserved for representatives of workers and farmers. Shahin indicated the elimination of this quota is not the job of the SCAF.
"This should be the collective will of political activists and MPs when they meet to draft a new constitution after the election,” said Shahin.
Liberal parties such as Al-Ghad and Al-Wafd, however, believe that "the 50 per cent quota for workers and farmers reflect the socialist ideology of the autocratic Nasserist age in Egypt in the 1960s."
Nour argued: "this quota was exploited by different regimes to flood parliament with loyal deputies and now it is high time to get rid of it altogether."
Leftists such as the Nasserist and Tagammu parties, however, believe that the 50 per cent quota of seats allocated to representatives of workers and farmers should be maintained, but only after revising the definitions of who are workers and farmers.
Rifaat El-Said, leader of the Tagammu, argued that “it is true that many deputies in previous parliaments were not truly representing workers and farmers, but this is not a sufficient cause to eliminate this quota altogether."
Shahin said "the People’s Assembly – Egypt’s lower house – will be comprised of 504 deputies." This is, added Shahin, not to mention that 10 more will be appointed by the President of the Republic.
This will bring the total number of MPs in the coming parliament to 514, compared with 545 in the outgoing parliament. Shahin also indicated that the election of the People’s Assembly will be held in 184 districts, 126 of which covered by the individual candidacy system and 58 by party-lists.
As for the upper consultative house, the Shura Council, Shahin indicated that the number of its members will increase to 390, two thirds of whom are elected and one third appointed by the president of the republic.
The number of Shura Council members currently stands at 264, a third of whom are appointed by the president. Shahin indicated the election of Shura Council will be held in 93 districts, 65 of which are covered by the individual candidacy system and 28 by party-lists.
Many political parties believe that the Shura Council should be eliminated altogether. Nour wondered that "instead of eliminating it, we are surprised that the number of its members has been increased substantially."
Shahin says that the SCAF has agreed that the minimum age of those eligible for standing in the People’s Assembly elections be reduced from 30 to 25.
"This is to help inject new blood into the People’s Assembly and encourage members of the youth movements of the 25th January revolution to join the lower house," said Shahin.
As for those who stand in Shura Council elections, Shahin indicated they should be no younger than 35.
According to Shahin, the actual preparations for the elections of the two houses of parliament will begin at the end of September.
"As for the vote,” said Shahin, "it will begin at least 30 days later to give enough time for newly-established parties build a good base of support on the street and among citizens, and also to allow civil society monitors to better oversee the process."
Shahin, however, said the SCAF is against any kind of international supervision or monitoring of Egypt’s parliamentary election.
"This is by no means accepted because it comes at the expense of Egyptian sovereignty," argued Shahin. He, however, indicated that the election will be fully supervised by judges.
According to Shahin, "the army vowed the vote will be fair and transparent and will be placed under full judicial supervision." He indicated that "the army’s role will be confined to guarding polling stations against assaults or acts of thuggery, but it is the judiciary who will take full control of supervising and monitoring the election process from the beginning to the end."
This signals a return to judicial supervision which was implemented during the 2000 and 2005 elections, resulting in increasing the number of opposition MPs, especially Islamist ones, in parliament.
A Higher Electoral Commission (HEC) will take full control of the elections, with all of its members belonging to the judiciary. HEC will meet on 18 September to begin preparing the country for the first post-25th January Revolution’s parliamentary election.
Shahin explained that the election will be held over three stages, with 15 days between each. "In each stage, the election will be held in a number of governorates," he said.
Most opposition parties generally welcome full judicial supervision of the election. Some, however, are worried that international monitors will be prevented from participating in overseeing the polls.
Mostafa Kamel El-Sayed, a political science professor, said "the SCAF has espoused the Mubarak’s regime's discourse that international monitors are against national sovereignty and this is wrong."
El-Sayed maintains the opposite is true.
"International monitoring gives an important signal to the outside world that Egypt has at last begun moving towards democratic rule and that it has no fears that foreign monitors come to oversee the election," he said.
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsCont...-politica.aspx
Egypt's protests persist despite new cabinet
For his part, Hasan Abdul Moneim, an activist, called on the military to stop interfering in the interim government's work. "We want the military council to remove its hand from
the decisions that the cabinet is supposed to be free to
make," he said.
"And the ministers should not just be a quick fix.
They should not bring in some people from the previous
regime to sit with people from the new government."
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/mi...952848300.html
Egyptians call for mass protest; new revolution and destruction of military council; military threatens protests
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