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Egypt’s Chief Prosecutor Resists President’s Effort to Oust Him (October 12, 2012)
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Maya Alleruzzo/Associated Press
Mr. Morsi, an Islamist and Egypt’s first elected president, portrayed
his decree as an attempt to fulfill popular demands for justice and
protect the transition to a constitutional democracy. But the unexpected
breadth of the powers he seized raised immediate fears that he might
become a new strongman. Seldom in history has a postrevolutionary leader
amassed so much personal power only to relinquish it swiftly.
“An absolute presidential tyranny,” Amr Hamzawy, a liberal member of the
dissolved Parliament and prominent political scientist, wrote in an
online commentary. “Egypt is facing a horrifying coup against legitimacy
and the rule of law and a complete assassination of the democratic
transition.”
Mr. Morsi issued the decree at a high point in his five-month-old
presidency, when he was basking in praise from the White House and
around the world for his central role in negotiating a cease-fire that the previous night had stopped the fighting in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas.
But his political opponents immediately called for demonstrations on
Friday to protest his new powers. “Passing a revolutionary demand within
a package of autocratic decisions is a setback for the revolution,”
Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a more liberal former leader of the Muslim
Brotherhood and a former presidential candidate, wrote online. And the
chief of the Supreme Constitutional Court indicated that it did not
accept the decree.
In Washington, a senior State Department official said, “We are seeking
more information about President Morsi’s decisions and declarations
today, which have raised concerns.”
Mr. Morsi’s advisers portrayed the decree as an attempt to cut through
the deadlock that has stalled Egypt’s convoluted political transition
more than 20 months after President Mubarak’s ouster. Mr. Morsi’s more
political opponents and the holdover judicial system, they argued, were
sabotaging the transition to thwart the Islamist majority.
The liberal and secular opposition has repeatedly threatened to boycott
the Islamist-dominated constitutional assembly. (It is led by Mr.
Morsi’s allies in the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party.
Members were picked by Parliament, where Islamists won a nearly
three-quarters majority.) And as the assembly nears a deadline set under
an earlier interim transition plan, most secular members and the
representatives of the Coptic Church have walked out, costing it up to a
quarter of its 100 members and much of its legitimacy.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Constitutional Court — which Mr. Mubarak had
tried to stack with loyalists and where a few judges openly fear
Islamists — is poised to issue a decision that could dissolve the
current assembly and require a new one. Another high court already
dissolved an earlier assembly and, on the eve of Mr. Morsi’s election in
June, the Constitutional Court also dissolved Parliament, in each case
citing technical issues of eligibility.
After the dissolution of Parliament, leaders of the council of generals
who had ruled since Mr. Mubarak’s ouster seized all legislative power
and control of the budget.
But in August, Mr. Morsi won the backing of many other generals and
officers for a decree that returned the army to its barracks and left
him in sole control of the government, with executive and legislative
authority.
Thursday’s decree frees Mr. Morsi, his decrees and the constitutional assembly from judicial oversight as well.
In a television interview, Mr. Morsi’s spokesman, Yasser Ali, stressed
that the expanded powers would last only until the ratification of a new
constitution in a few months, calling the decree “an attempt to end the
transitional period as soon as possible.”
“Going around in a vicious circle in a transitional period has to end,”
he said, apparently referring to the deadlocked constitutional assembly.
In some respects, Mr. Morsi’s decree fulfills opposition demands.
Secular representatives in the constitutional assembly had walked out in
part over their accusation that the Islamists were unfairly rushing the
work. But the decree pushes the deadline back two months from the end
of the year.
Mr. Morsi also replaced the public prosecutor, Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, a
Mubarak appointee widely criticized for failing to win stronger
sentences against Mr. Mubarak and his associates, and against abusive
police officers. (Mr. Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison for
overseeing the killing of protesters, but the verdict found no direct
evidence of his involvement, paving the way for an appeal.)
Mr. Mahmoud’s replacement is Talaat Ibrahim Abdullah, former leader of
the movement for judicial independence under Mr. Mubarak.
Mr. Morsi ordered retrials for Mr. Mubarak and others accused of
responsibility for killing civilian protesters during the uprising. He
stripped the accused of protections against being tried twice for the
same crime and issued a law setting up a new transitional legal system
to handle the retrials.
Another decree provision granted the president the “power to take all
necessary measures and procedures” against any potential threat to the
revolution.
On the Web site of the state newspaper Al Ahram, a prominent jurist,
Salah Eissa, urged citizens “to take to the street and die, because
Egypt is lost,” adding, “immunizing the decisions of the president with a
constitutional declaration is a forgery and a fraud.”
Nathan J. Brown, a scholar of the Egyptian legal system at George
Washington University, summed up the overall message: “I, Morsi, am all
powerful. And in my first act as being all powerful, I declare myself
more powerful still. But don’t worry — it’s just for a little while.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:Correction: November 23, 2012
An earlier version of this article misidentified the court that earlier dissolved the constitutional assembly. It was not the Supreme Constitutional Court, it was another court.
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