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Pressure Grows on Egyptian Leader After Judicial Decree
Pressure Grows on Egyptian Leader After Judicial Decree
(about 2 hours later)
CAIRO — New cracks emerged in the government of President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt on Sunday over his decree claiming power beyond the review of any court in the country, which has been met with loud protests. While Mr. Morsi defended his decree and insisted that it was only temporary, his justice minister began arguing publicly for a retreat that might defuse an escalating battle between Egypt’s new Islamist leaders and the institutions of its old authoritarian government.
CAIRO — Cracks appeared on Sunday in the government of President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt, facing mounting pressure over his sweeping decree seeking to elevate his edicts above the reach of any court until a new constitution is approved.
The justice minister, Ahmed Mekki, is an influential former leader of the movement for judicial independence under Hosni Mubarak, and is now one of Mr. Morsi’s closest advisers. He told two television talk shows late Saturday night that he objected to the scope of the president’s decree, which his opponents say could be a first step toward a new Islamist autocracy.
Mr. Morsi’s justice minister began arguing publicly for a retreat. At least three other senior advisers resigned over the measure. And it has prompted widening street protests and cries from opponents that Mr. Morsi was moving to inaugurate a new autocracy in Egypt, less than two years after the ouster of the former strongman Hosni Mubarak.
The president’s office has said the decree was needed to protect the democratically chosen constituent assembly that is trying to write a new Egyptian constitution from Mubarak-appointed judges who appeared poised to dissolve it. Mr. Mekki said that he supported that goal but that the president could accomplish it with a much narrower edict — one that did not assert sweeping immunity from judicial review on other matters, the feature of the decree Mr. Morsi issued on Thursday that has prompted the loudest protests.
With a threatened strike by the nation’s judges, a plunge in the country’s stock market and more street protests looming, Mr. Morsi’s administration sent mixed messages on Sunday over whether it was willing to consider a compromise. A spokesman for the president’s party insisted that there would be no change in his edict, but a statement from the party indicated for the first time a willingness to give political opponents “guarantees against monopolizing the fateful decisions of the homeland in the absence of the Parliament.”
On Sunday, Mr. Mekki met with the highest council overseeing the Egyptian courts to discuss the matter, and the council issued a statement of its own that scholars said appeared to endorse Mr. Mekki’s proposed compromise. Mr. Morsi is scheduled to meet with his advisers to discuss it Tuesday morning.
And the justice minister, Ahmed Mekki, the influential leader of a judicial independent movement under Mr. Mubarak and one of Mr. Morsi’s closest aides, was actively trying to broker a deal with top jurists to resolve the crisis.
“In his head, the president thought that this would push us forward, but then it was met with all this inflammation,” Mr. Mekki said of Mr. Morsi’s decree. He faulted the president for failing to consult with his opponents before issuing it, but he also faulted the opponents for their own unwillingness to come to the table: “I blame all of Egypt, because they do not know how to talk to each other.”
The situation is the most acute test to date of the ability and willingness of Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president and a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, to engage in the kind of give and take that democratic government requires. But he also must contend with real doubts about the willingness of his anti-Islamist opponents to join him in compromise. Each side is mired in deep suspicion of the other, a legacy of the decades when the Brotherhood survived here only as an insular secret society, demonized as dangerous radicals by most of the Egyptian elite.
Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president and a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, now faces a test of his ability and willingness to engage in the kind of compromise that democratic government requires. But he also faces real doubts about the willingness of his secular-minded opponents to join him in compromise. Each side is mired in suspicion of the other, a legacy of the decades when the Brotherhood survived here only as an insular secret society, demonized as dangerous radicals by most of the Egyptian elite.
“There is a deep mistrust,” said Emad Shahin, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo who studies the Brotherhood. “It is an ugly round of partisan politics,” he said, “a bone-crushing phase.”
“There is a deep mistrust,” said Emad Shahin, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo who studies the Brotherhood. “It is an ugly round of partisan politics,” he said, “a bone-crushing phase.”
Some conflicting signals emerged Sunday from people close to the president, while Egypt’s stock market fell sharply, driven by investors’ concerns about increased instability, and street protests continued in Cairo and elsewhere. A teenager was killed and 40 people were injured when protesters stormed a Muslim Brotherhood building in Damanhoor in the Nile Delta, the Associated Press reported, citing security officials.
The scale of the backlash against the decree appeared to catch Mr. Morsi’s government by surprise. “In his head, the president thought that this would push us forward, but then it was met with all this inflammation,” Mr. Mekki said. He faulted the president for failing to consult with his opponents before issuing it, but he also faulted the opponents for their own unwillingness to come to the table: “I blame all of Egypt, because they do not know how to talk to each other.”
.The president’s office issued a statement on Sunday stressing that the controversial decree was meant to last only until the country approves a new constitution, and that Mr. Morsi was committed to reaching a national consensus on what that new constitution should say.
Government and party officials maintained that Mr. Morsi was forced to claim the expansive new powers in order to protect the process of writing the country’s new constitution, and that the decree would be in effect only until the charter was in place. A court of judges appointed under the Mubarak government was widely rumored to be about to dissolve the elected constitutional assembly, which is dominated by Mr. Morsi’s Islamist allies — just as the same court had previously cast out the newly elected Islamist-led Parliament — and the decree issued by Mr. Morsi on Thursday gave him the power to stop it.
A spokesman for Mr. Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party, though, insisted that the president would never back down from the decree, arguing that the constituent assembly working on the constitution needed protection both from Mubarak-era judges and from obstructionist political opponents who want to drag out Egypt’s transition. The first attempt to form a constitutional assembly was annulled by judges, and the latest version has been plagued by complaints that the Islamists who dominate it were rushing through the work and ignoring minority concerns.
“I see with all of you, clearly, that the court verdict is announced two or three weeks before the court session,” Mr. Morsi told his supporters on Friday, referring to the pervasive rumors about the court’s impending action in a fiery speech defending his decree. “We will dissolve the entire homeland, as it seems! How is that? How? Those waywards must be held accountable."
Both the president’s office and his political party issued statements on Sunday suggesting, for the first time, a willingness to compromise with opponents and provide “guarantees against monopolizing the fateful decisions of the homeland in the absence of the Parliament.”
He said that corrupt Mubarak loyalists were “hiding under the cover of the judiciary” and declared, “I will uncover them!”
Mr. Mekki, the justice minister, said he trusted Mr. Morsi’s intention to quickly end Egypt’s tortured political transition, bring back a parliament and turn over the vast power he currently holds. “But the means, the tools and the wording caused exactly the opposite of what was required,” the justice minister said, urging Mr. Morsi to amend the decree.
But instead of rallying the public to his side and speeding the country’s political transition, as Mr. Morsi evidently hoped, his decree has sparked new instability across the country. On Sunday, the first day of business here since the decree was issued, the Egyptian stock market fell by about 9.5 percent, erasing more than $4 billion of value.
The decree’s sweeping nature, insulating all the president’s actions from judicial oversight at a time when, after the Parliament was shut down by the courts, he wields legislative as well as executive power, prompted at least three presidential advisers to resign. They include Samir Morqos, one of the few Christians in the administration; Sekina Fouad, one of the few women, and Farouk Guweida, a poet and intellectual.
Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political offshoot, the Freedom & Justice Party, faced the ire of protesters. Nader Omran, a spokesman for the party, said on Sunday that as many as 13 of its offices around the country had been burned or ransacked, and he blamed the attacks on an organized conspiracy.
On Saturday, judges across Egypt rebelled against the decree, and a major association of judges, the Judges Club, called for a judicial strike. State television reported Sunday that Mr. Mekki was meeting with judges in Cairo in an attempt to broker a resolution.
The most significant sign of the growing pressure on Mr. Morsi, though, may have been the apparent efforts of Mr. Mekki, the justice minister, to address the crisis by finding a way to scale back the decree.
A coalition of opposition leaders, including the former United Nations diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei and three other former Egyptian presidential candidates, demanded that the decree be canceled.
Beginning in two television interviews late Saturday night, Mr. Mekki said that he trusted the sincerity of the president’s intention to quickly end Egypt’s tortured political transition, bring back a Parliament and turn over to it much of the vast power he currently holds. But Mr. Mekki said the text of Mr. Morsi’s decree was much too sweeping, and that he could never have signed it himself because it “violates my core convictions.”
On the first day of trading since the decree was issued, Egypt’s stock market fell about 9.5 percent over concerns that the latest standoff could bring more instability. Clashes involving the opposition were reported Sunday in Cairo for a third day, and the Muslim Brotherhood has called for rival demonstrations, raising the possibility of street fights between the two sides.
“The means, the tools and the wording caused exactly the opposite of what was required,” he said.
A judicial strike would be the steepest escalation yet in a political struggle between the country’s new Islamist leaders and the institutions of the old authoritarian government over the drafting of a constitution.
He publicly urged Mr. Morsi to amend the decree so that it would no longer place all the president’s future edicts above judicial scrutiny — the provision that aroused the loudest outcry — but instead would protect only edicts related to the functions of the constituent assembly and upper house of Parliament.
The call to strike by the Judges Club, which has been led in recent years by a clique loyal to Mr. Mubarak and is opposed to the Islamists, followed a vote by a more representative assembly of about 1,000 club members. They urged courts to suspend all activities except those vital to citizens, and it was unclear how individual courts might respond.
“I believe it is the duty of the president” to limit the decree’s scope, Mr. Mekki said.
State news media reported that judges and prosecutors had already declared a strike in Alexandria, and there were reports of planned walkouts in Qulubiya and Beheira, but those could not be confirmed.
Mr. Mekki met on Sunday with the Supreme Council of the Judiciary, the highest council overseeing the Egyptian courts, to discuss the issue, and there were signs that he may have had some influence. In a statement afterward, the council urged judges not to disrupt their work by joining in a proposed strike over the decree. But the council also appeared to join Mr. Mekki in urging the president to scale back his writ, calling for limiting the immunity from judicial review to “laws and decisions issued by the president as sovereignty acts,” a reference to Egyptian legal precedents that could justify such immunity in certain circumstances.
As the Judges Club met Saturday in the High Court building, a small crowd of protesters outside chanted that Egypt’s judges were “a red line.” When another group armed with the flares favored by hard-core soccer fans tried to force their way into the building, the police fired tear gas.
Mr. Morsi was expected to meet with the Supreme Council of the Judiciary on Monday to discuss the issue.
Inside, the Mubarak-appointed chief prosecutor, Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, declared to a crowd of cheering judges that he rejected Mr. Morsi’s attempt to fire him. He called the presidential decree “null and void” and warned of a “systematic campaign against the country’s institutions in general and the judiciary in particular.” Judges chanted for the “fall of the regime,” reprising the signature rallying cry of the revolt last year against Mr. Mubarak, but this time against Mr. Morsi.
It was unclear whether the court that was due to rule on the constitutional assembly, the Supreme Constitutional Court, would respect such an action. When that court dissolved the elected Parliament, Mr. Morsi sought to use a presidential decree to restore it, only to have the court strike down that action as well.
Khaled Ali, a human rights lawyer, said he had filed one of several lawsuits asking the courts to attempt to overturn Mr. Morsi’s decree.
Most of the political opposition in the country, newly united to fight the latest decree, has vowed not to hold talks with Mr. Morsi until he withdraws it.
The coalition of political opposition leaders, calling their group the National Salvation Front, declared that it would not negotiate with Mr. Morsi about resolving the crisis until he withdrew his decree. “We will not enter into a dialogue about anything while this constitutional declaration remains intact and in force,” said Amr Moussa, one of the leaders and Mr. Mubarak’s former foreign minister. “We demand that it be withdrawn, and then we can talk.”
The state news media reported that the Morsi advisers who had resigned over the decree included Samir Morqos, one of the few Christians in the administration; Sekina Fouad, one of the few women, and Farouk Guweida, a poet and intellectual.
Mr. Morsi’s supporters accuse many in the constituent assembly’s non-Islamist minority of deliberately dragging their feet, hoping to obstruct the path to a constitutional democracy because they cannot accept their electoral defeat by the Islamists, who have pressed to complete the constitution by the end of the year.
The Muslim Brotherhood and Mr. Morsi’s opponents have each called for major demonstrations in Cairo on Tuesday, and some fear violence. Sporadic clashes broke out over the weekend in several cities, including Damanhour in the Nile Delta, one of the places where the Brotherhood’s offices were attacked. A 15-year-old Brotherhood supporter, Islam Fathi Masoud, was killed in that incident, and security officials said scores were injured.
“They are afraid of democracy, really,” Essam el-Erian, vice chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, said of the non-Islamist minority in an interview this month. “They only debate to block the way, to stop the constitutional process.”
By Sunday night, Brotherhood leaders were citing the boy as an inspiration. “When Future of Egypt is in balance, we have no regrets, we are more than willing to pay for it with our lives, not votes,” Gehad el-Haddad, a spokesman for the Brotherhood, wrote in an online message reproduced on the group’s Web site.
On Saturday, the Judges Club and some others in the secular opposition, including Mr. Moussa, called for a new assembly less dominated by Islamists to take over work on the constitution — a call that Mr. Morsi’s supporters called vindication of their belief that judges and the opposition meant to block the assembly’s work. “They are lending weight to his suspicions,” said Mona El-Ghobashy, an Egyptian professor at Barnard who studies both the Brotherhood and the courts.
The increasingly vocal criticism of the assembly threatens to undermine the legitimacy of the ultimate charter, and it has only increased the likelihood that Islamist leaders may seek to pass and ratify it on their own, over the opposition of other groups, further damaging its credibility.
Kareem Fahim, Nevine Ramzy and Mai Ayyad contributed reporting.
Kareem Fahim, Nevine Ramzy and Mai Ayyad contributed reporting.
