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More Morsi Aides Resign as Egypt Deploys Tanks in Cairo More Morsi Aides Resign as Egypt Deploys Tanks in Cairo
(about 2 hours later)
CAIRO — Resignations rocked the government of President Mohamed Morsi on Thursday as tanks from the special presidential guard took up positions around his palace and the state television headquarters after a night of street fighting between his Islamist supporters and their secular opponents that left at least 6 dead and 450 wounded. CAIRO — Egypt descended deeper into political turmoil on Thursday as the embattled president, Mohamed Morsi, blamed an outbreak of violence on a “fifth column” and vowed to proceed with a referendum on an Islamist-backed constitution that has prompted deadly street battles between his supporters and their secular opponents.
The director of state broadcasting resigned Thursday, as did Rafik Habib, a Christian who was the vice president of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party and the party’s favorite example of its commitment to tolerance and pluralism. Their departures followed an announcement by Zaghoul el-Balshi, the new general secretary of the commission overseeing a planned constitutional referendum, that he was quitting. “I will not participate in a referendum that spilled Egyptian blood,” he said in a television interview during the clashes late Wednesday night. As the tanks and armored vehicles of an elite military unit ringed the presidential palace, Mr. Morsi gave a nationally televised address offering only a hint of compromise, while preserving his assertion of sweeping authority. His opponents quickly rejected, even mocked, his speech and vowed continued protests ahead of a planned Dec. 15 vote on the draft constitution.
With the resignations on Thursday, nine Morsi administration officials have quit in protest in recent days. Many said the speech had echoes of his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, who saw conspiracy in the unrest that brought him down. Mr. Morsi said that corrupt beneficiaries of Mr. Mubarak’s autocracy had been “hiring thugs and giving out firearms, and the time has come for them to be punished and penalized by the law.” He added, “It is my duty to defend the homeland.”
Late in a day of tension and uncertainty, Mr. Morsi gave a nationally televised speech in which he refused to back down on plans to hold a public referendum on Dec. 15 to vote on a draft constitution approved by his Islamist allies over the objections of his secular opposition and the Coptic Christian Church. Mr. Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, spoke a day after the growing antagonism between his supporters and the secular opposition had spilled out into the worst outbreak of violence between political factions here since Gamal Abdel Nasser’s coup six decades ago. By the time the fighting ended, six people were dead and hundreds wounded.
The top scholar of Al Azhar, the center of Sunni Muslim learning that is considered Egypt’s chief moral authority, urged both sides to pull back from violence and seek “rational dialogue.” The violence also led to resignations that rocked the government, as advisers, party members and the head of the commission overseeing a planned vote on a new constitution stepped down, citing the bloodshed and the president’s management of the political crisis.
About 1 p.m. Thursday, hundreds of his supporters who had camped outside his palace to defend it — many waking up with bandaged heads from wounds sustained from volleys of rocks and the blows of makeshift clubs the previous night — abruptly began to pull out of their encampment in unison, a development that suggested that their organizers in the Muslim Brotherhood had ordered a withdrawal. It took place just moments after several Brotherhood members camped there had vowed to stay put until the referendum, set for Dec. 15. Mr. Morsi also received a phone call from President Obama, who expressed his “deep concern” about the deaths and injuries overnight, the White House said in a statement.
The Egyptian military, which seized power from Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, saying it was stepping in to protect the legitimate demands of the public, stayed silent after a statement Wednesday that it would not intervene in a dispute between political factions. The presidential guard that deployed Thursday is a separate unit that reports directly to the president. “The president emphasized that all political leaders in Egypt should make clear to their supporters that violence is unacceptable,” the statement said, chastising both Mr. Morsi and the opposition leaders for failing to urge their supporters to pull back during the fight.
Wednesday night’s battle was the worst clash between political factions here since the days of President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s military coup six decades ago, and Egyptians across the political spectrum responded with shock and dismay. Prospects of a political solution also seemed a casualty, as both sides effectively refused to back down on core demands.
Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a popular former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who ran for president as a liberal Islamist and has stayed on the sidelines of the escalating conflict between Mr. Morsi and his secular opponents, slammed the president and the Brotherhood for calling on their civilian supporters to defend the palace with force rather than relying the institutions of law enforcement. The opposition leadership refused to negotiate until Mr. Morsi withdrew a decree that put his judgments beyond judicial review — which he refused to do. And it demanded that a referendum on a new constitution be canceled, which he also refused.
“The palace is not a private property to the Muslim Brotherhood or Dr. Morsi; it belongs to us, all Egyptians,” Mr. Aboul Fotouh said in a televised news conference. He was flanked by a Morsi adviser who had just resigned and by a well-known revolutionary poet who is the son of Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, perhaps the most influential religious scholar in the Sunni Muslim world and a spiritual guru to the Muslim Brotherhood. The hostilities have threatened to undermine the legitimacy of the constitutional referendum with doubts about political coercion. The feasibility of holding the vote also appears uncertain amid attacks on party offices around the country and open street fighting in the shadow of the presidential palace.
Wednesday night’s clashes followed two weeks of sporadic violence around the country that erupted after Mr. Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, seized temporary powers beyond the review of any court, removing the last check on his authority until ratification of the new constitution. Though Mr. Morsi spoke of opening a door for dialogue and compromise, leaders of the political opposition and the thousands of protesters surrounding his palace dismissed his conspiratorial saber rattling as an echo of Mr. Mubarak. And his tone, after a night many here view as a national tragedy, seemed only to widen the gulf between his Islamist backers and their secular opponents over his efforts to push through the referendum on an Islamist-backed charter approved over the objections of most liberal factions and the Coptic Christian church.
Mr. Morsi has said he needed the expanded powers to block a conspiracy by corrupt businessmen, Mubarak-appointed judges and opposition leaders to thwart Egypt’s transition to a constitutional democracy. Some opponents, Mr. Morsi’s advisers say, would sacrifice democracy to stop the Islamists from winning elections. Outside the palace, demonstrators huddled around car radios to listen to Mr. Morsi’s words and mocked his attempts to blame outside infiltrators for the violence, which began when thousands of his Islamist supporters rousted an opposition sit-in.
Mr. Morsi’s secular critics have accused Mr. Morsi and the Islamists of seeking to establish a new dictatorship, in part by ramming through a rushed constitution that they say could ultimately give new power over society to Muslim scholars and Islamists groups. And each side’s actions have confirmed the other’s fears. “So we are the ones who attacked him, the ones who attacked the sit-in?” one protesters asked sarcastically. “So we are the ones with the swords and weapons and money?” asked another.
Now, the distrust and animosity between Islamists and their secular opponents have mired the outcome of Egypt’s promised transition to democracy in debates about the legitimacy of the new government and its new leaders’ commitment to the rule of law. Some left for the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, where a mob had broken in, looted offices, and made a bonfire out of the belongings of the group’s spiritual leader — until riot police officers chased them away with tear gas.
The fighting Wednesday began when the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups summoned thousands of their supporters to a rally in the support of the president outside the palace in the Heliopolis neighborhood, where a small group of his opponents had begun a sit-in the night before. The Islamists chased away the protesters, tearing down their tents and beating those who resisted, protesters said. And a few hours later, around 6 p.m., thousands of the secularists returned to try to retake the battleground. “I never thought I would say this, but even Mubarak was more savvy when he spoke in a time of crisis,” said Hossam Bahgat, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
Riot police officers initially tried to disperse the antagonists with tear gas, protesters said, but they soon retreated. A chaotic melee of thrown rocks and Molotov cocktails engulfed several blocks of Heliopolis, one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the capital, and the fighting was punctuated by the occasional blast of a shotgun. The source of the gunfire could not be determined, but secular protesters showed journalists birdshot wounds and large white pellets fired from the guns. The director of state broadcasting resigned Thursday, as did Rafik Habib, a Christian who was the vice president of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party and the party’s favorite example of its commitment to tolerance and pluralism. Their departures followed an announcement by Zaghoul el-Balshi, the new general secretary of the commission overseeing a planned constitutional referendum, that he was quitting.
By Thursday morning, the soldiers of the presidential guard were nailing barbed-wire barriers into the streets surrounding the palace to hold back protesters and keep the factions apart. Rubble, broken glass and projectiles made from broken paving stones littered the streets for blocks. Car windshields were broken, and a handful of burned-out wrecks littered the streets. Splotches of white paint hid graffiti mocking Mr. Morsi that had covered the palace walls after the secular protest on Tuesday night. Mr. Morsi’s speech, previously set for 6 p.m. here and delayed for several hours, was his first attempt to address both the night of deadly violence and the underlying crisis set off by his Nov. 22 decree putting his own edicts above the review of any court until the ratification of a new constitution. He has said he needed those powers to protect the constitutional assembly and planned referendum. He said he wanted to head off interference by a counterrevolutionary conspiracy of corrupt businessmen and foreign enemies, cynical opposition leaders willing to derail democracy rather than let Islamists win elections, and the Mubarak-appointed judges who had already dissolved an earlier assembly and the democratically elected Parliament.
A few dozen protesters stood by the barbed wire chanting slogans against Mr. Morsi and the Islamists. “The people want the fall of the supreme guide,” they said, referring to the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, and the army must choose “between the revolutionaries and the killers.” Each side of the political battle is now convinced that it faces an imminent coup. Secular groups believe Mr. Morsi is forcing through a constitution that will ultimately allow Islamist groups and religious leaders to wield new power. And the demands to stop the referendum have persuaded Islamists that their secular opponents seek to abort the new democracy.
On the other side of the tanks and barbed wire, hundreds of Islamists milled around an encampment of more than a dozen tents. A sound truck drove through the crowd blaring prayers and patriotic music. Words written on its back declared, “Protect Egypt — yes to the constitution for stability!” Advisers to Mr. Morsi say he has sought for days to find a way to reach out to his critics and resolve the building tension. In his speech, he offered to withdraw an article of his recent decree whose Orwellian language giving him ill-defined powers to protect the revolution had unnerved his opponents. He invited opposition and youth leaders to join him for a meeting at his palace at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday to try to hammer out some compromise, suggesting certain elements of the draft charter might be revised. And he declared that even if the constitution failed he would relinquish his emergency powers at the referendum on Dec. 15.
Many demonstrators said they were members of the Muslim Brotherhood from other provinces who had shown up to defend Egypt’s democracy from a conspiracy by foreign powers, corrupt businessmen and cynical opposition leaders. Their secular opponents were thugs and street children who had been paid to fight, they insisted, arguing that democracy demanded respected for Egypt’s first freely elected president. But opposition leaders dismissed his offers as meaningless. Their main objection to Mr. Morsi’s decree is the more essential article removing the judicial check on his power. They said that his proposed dialogue would take place on the first day of overseas voting on the new constitution, giving the meeting little chance of changing the text or the schedule. And the text of the draft constitution, if approved as expected, would already end his emergency powers.
In a token of the deep suspicions since Egypt’s revolution, some maintained that Mr. Morsi could not rely on the police force to defend him and his palace because its leaders were holdovers from the old government trying to position themselves to be on the winning side of the political battle. Mohamed ElBaradei, the former diplomat now acting as coordinator of the secular opposition, said Mr. Morsi’s refusal to postpone the referendum until there was consensus on a new constitution had “closed the door to any dialogue.” He argued that the Morsi government’s failure to stop the previous night’s bloodshed had “made the authority lose its legitimacy.”
“We must take our freedom; it will not be given to us on a golden platter,” said Mohamed Hassan Awad Rashid, 54, a schoolteacher and member of the Muslim Brotherhood from Sharqiya in the Nile Delta, who said he had arrived Wednesday and would stay until the referendum. “If we don’t complete our revolution now, then we are digging our own graves.” And he repeated the opposition’s call for another day of protests across the country Friday. Shock at Wednesday’s violence is expected to ensure a strong turnout. But in Cairo it could also bring new clashes, because the opposition’s demonstration will coincide with a public funeral for two members of the Muslim Brotherhood killed in the clashes.
A crowd of other supporters nodded at his determination to stay until the completion of a referendum. But about half an hour later, the order for a pullout was given, and soon after virtually all the Islamists were gone. State media reported that by 3 p.m., the presidential guard would enforce an evacuation of the area. “President Morsi had a choice to either bring the country together or tear it apart,” Nadine Sherif of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies said in a statement. “Today it seems clear that he has made his decision and civil war seems looming.”
Mohamed ElBaradei, the former United Nations diplomat, was chosen Wednesday as coordinator for the newly unified secular opposition. He urged Mr. Morsi and his allies to “see what is happening in the Egyptian street, the division, the polarization. This is something that leads us to violence and worse.” Muslim Brotherhood members who camped out outside the office and Mr. Morsi’s advisers both said he had turned to the Brotherhood and other Islamist groups to defend the palace because he did not trust the holdover chiefs of the interior ministry to defend it. Mr. Morsi and the Brotherhood concluded that the ministry’s leaders were more concerned with their own image and survival than protecting the office of the president.
“The ball is in his court,” Mr. ElBaradei said at a news conference in which he threatened a general strike or other action to try to stop the referendum. “Bullying will not yield any results for this country. But after the decision to rely on the Islamists for protection backfired in the night of bloodshed, Mr. Morsi on Thursday called out the tanks and troops of the presidential guard — an elite unit that operates outside the control of Egypt’s military generals, who have vowed to stay neutral in the current political conflict.
“The people of Egypt will be gathering everywhere,” he added. “We will not finish this battle for our freedom and dignity until we are victorious.”

Two employees of The New York Times contributed reporting.

Mr. Morsi did not respond to the clashes. His party said it held Mr. ElBaradei and other secular leaders responsible for any violence.
But the Brotherhood’s leaders appeared to speak for the president. The group issued its own statement defending the need for Mr. Morsi’s actions to fight off “treacherous plots” against Egypt’s nascent democracy.
“We are confident that the Egyptian people who made this great revolution that impressed the whole world will not abandon democracy or their revolution,” the group said, “and must support the president they chose freely for the first time in history.”

Mai Ayyad contributed reporting.