New York Times
By the Millions, Egyptians Seek Morsi’s Ouster
Sunday June 30, 2013
DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, KAREEM FAHIM and BEN HUBBARD
CAIRO — Millions of Egyptians streamed into the streets of cities across
the country on Sunday to demand the ouster of their first elected head
of state, President Mohamed Morsi, in an outpouring of anger at the
political dominance of his Islamist backers in the Muslim Brotherhood.
The scale of the demonstrations, coming just one year after crowds in
Tahrir Square cheered Mr. Morsi’s inauguration, appeared to exceed even
the massive street protests in the heady final days of the uprising that
overthrew President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
At a moment when Mr. Morsi
is still struggling to control the bureaucracy and just beginning to
build public support for painful economic reforms, the protests have
raised new hurdles to his ability to lead the country as well as new
questions about Egypt’s path to stability.
Clashes between Mr. Morsi’s opponents and supporters broke out in
several cities around the country, killing at least seven people — one
in the southern town of Beni Suef, four in the southern town of Assiut
and two in Cairo — and injuring hundreds. Protesters ransacked
Brotherhood offices around the country.
In Cairo, a mob of hundreds set
fire to the almost-empty Brotherhood headquarters, pelting it with
stones, Molotov cocktails and fireworks for hours. A few members hiding
inside the darkened building fired bursts of birdshot at the attackers,
wounding several, but the police and security forces did nothing to stop
the assault or the arson.
Demonstrators said they were angry about the near total absence of
public security, the desperate state of the Egyptian economy and an
increase in sectarian tensions. But the common denominator across the
country was the conviction that Mr. Morsi had failed to transcend his
roots in the Brotherhood, an insular Islamist group officially outlawed
under Mr. Mubarak that is now considered Egypt’s most formidable
political force.
The scale of the protests across the country delivered a
sharp rebuke to the group’s claim that its victories in Egypt’s newly
open parliamentary and presidential elections gave it a mandate to speak
for most Egyptians.
“Enough is enough,” said Alaa al-Aswany, a prominent Egyptian writer who
was among the many at the protests who had supported the president just
a year ago. “It has been decided for Mr. Morsi. Now, we are waiting for
him to understand.”
Shadi Hamid, a researcher at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar who
studies the Muslim Brotherhood closely, said: “The Brotherhood
underestimated its opposition.” He added: “This is going to be a real
moment of truth for the Brotherhood.”
Mr. Morsi and Brotherhood leaders have often ascribed much of the
opposition in the streets to a conspiracy led by Mubarak-era political
and financial elites determined to bring them down, and they have
resisted concessions in the belief that the opposition’s only real
motive is the Brotherhood’s defeat. But no conspiracy can brings
millions to the streets, and by Sunday night some analysts said the
protests would send a message to other Islamist groups around the region
in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
“It is a cautionary note: don’t be too eager for power, and try to think
how you do it,” Mr. Hamid said, faulting the Egyptian Brotherhood for
seeking to take most of the power for itself all at once. “I hear
concern from Islamists around the region about how the Brotherhood is
tainting Islamism.”
Mr. Morsi’s administration appeared caught by surprise. “There are
protests; this is a reality,” Omar Amer, a spokesman for the president,
said at a midnight news conference. “We don’t underestimate the scale of
the protests, and we don’t underestimate the scale of the demands.”
He
said the administration was open to discussing any demands consistent
with the Constitution, but he also seemed exasperated, sputtering
questions back at the journalists. “Do you have a better idea? Do you
have an initiative?” he asked. “Suggest a solution and we’re willing to
consider it seriously.”
Many vowed to stay in the streets until Mr. Morsi resigned. Some joked
that it should be comparatively easy: just two years ago, Egyptian
protesters toppled a more powerful president, even though he controlled a
fearsome police state. But there is no legal mechanism to remove Mr.
Morsi until the election of a new Parliament, expected later this year,
and even some critics acknowledge that forcing the first democratically
elected president from power would set a precedent for future
instability.
Some of the protesters called for another intervention by the military,
which seized power from Mr. Mubarak and held onto it for more than a
year. Chants were directed to the defense minister, Gen. Abdul-Fattah
el-Sisi: “Come on Sisi, make a decision!”
General Sisi, for his part, has stayed carefully neutral, feeding the
protesters’ hopes. In a statement last week urging the president and his
opponents to compromise, the general said the military would “intervene
to keep Egypt from sliding into a dark tunnel of conflict, internal
fighting, criminality, accusations of treason, sectarian discord and the
collapse of state institutions.”
Many in the opposition saw the statement as an indication that if
Sunday’s protests were disruptive enough, the military would take over
once again. The military sent four helicopters flying low over a
demonstration in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Sunday to reinforce its power
and control, and many below cheered.
The Web site of the flagship state newspaper, Al Ahram, reported Sunday
that soldiers had been ordered only to “protect the will of the people
without bias to any side at the expense of the other, especially as the
political forces have not reached any formula of consensus.”
The extrication of the military from power was the biggest achievement
of Mr. Morsi’s first year in office.
Last August, months after his
election, the generals finally went back to their barracks and allowed
him to take full power as president, although the military retains
considerable autonomy under Egypt’s new Constitution.
But Mr. Morsi continued to battle institutions within his own government
left over from Mr. Mubarak, most notably the judiciary, and some of
those fights contributed to the protests that peaked Sunday. The
protests began in November, when he tried to declare himself above the
courts until the passage of a new Constitution, a move that reinforced
the fears of his opponents and perhaps the general public that he
threatened to become a new autocrat.
“He was of the revolution,” said Magdi Morsi, an airline flight planner
demonstrating in front of the presidential palace who is not related to
the president. He said he had voted for Brotherhood candidates for
Parliament as well as for Mr. Morsi but had turned against them for
failing to deliver on their promises. “I decided he was a big liar,” he
said. “He must leave. The public is against him now.”
The police, another institution left intact from the Mubarak government,
are in open revolt against Mr. Morsi.
In anticipation of Sunday’s
protests, the interior minister had already announced that the police
would not protect the offices of the Muslim Brotherhood from attack. And
when the protests began, police officers were almost nowhere to be
found.
Several officers in uniform joined the protesters in Tahrir Square
calling for Mr. Morsi’s ouster and asking the military to intervene. Two
officers were seen in the vicinity of the attack on the Brotherhood’s
headquarters talking on hand-held radios, but they did nothing to
intervene.
Two armored vehicles from the interior security forces later arrived but
also did nothing to stop the attack. The officers listened for a while
as the attackers appealed to them to arrest the few Brotherhood members
trying to defend their headquarters with birdshot, and then they left.
The attackers used green pen lasers to search for figures at the windows
of the Brotherhood offices, then hurled Molotov cocktails. They vowed
to show no mercy on the members inside. “Their leaders have left them
like sheeps for the slaughter,” one said. Two people were killed in the
violence at the headquarters, medics there said.
Thousands of Mr. Morsi’s supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood had
gathered at a rally near the presidential palace to prepare to defend it
if the protesters tried to attack. Many brought batons, pipes, bats,
hard hats or motorcycle helmets, even woks or scraps of metal to use as
shields. They stood at attention with clubs raised and marched together.
“We will sacrifice our lives for our religion,” some chanted. “Morsi’s
men are everywhere.”
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