Egyptian protesters gather in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Sunday. President Morsi edicts, which were announced on Thursday, place him above oversight of any kind.(Photo: Ahmed Gomaa, AP)
Story Highlights
- Morsi’s new powers put him above oversight
- The country’s justice minister has been trying to defuse the crisis
- Morsi’s decrees have been deemed dictatorial by opponents
1:48PM EST November 26. 2012 –
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s Islamist president has told the nation’s top judges that he acted within his rights when he issued a series of decrees giving him sweeping powers, according to his spokesman.
That stand is likely to trigger a prolonged showdown with the opposition.
Presidential spokesman Yasser Ali told reporters Monday that Mohammed Morsi assured the judges that the decrees did not in any way “infringe” on the judiciary.
Ali’s comments signaled Morsi’s resolve not to back down or compromise on the steps he announced Thursday, putting himself and a body writing a new constitution above the judiciary.
Morsi’s opponents and supporters plan rival rallies on Tuesday in Cairo.
The dispute over the decrees, the latest in the country’s bumpy transition to democracy, has taken a toll on the nation’s already ailing economy — Egypt’s benchmark stock index dropped more than 9.5 percentage points on Sunday, the first day of trading since Morsi’s announcement. It fell again Monday during early trading but recovered to close up by 2.6 percentage points.
It has also played out in urban street protests across the country, including in the capital Cairo and the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria.
The Health Ministry said Monday that a total of 444 people have been wounded nationwide since the clashes erupted on Friday. Forty-nine of these remain hospitalized, it said in a statement carried by official news agency MENA.
In the Nile Delta city of Damanhoor, a teenager was killed late Sunday and at least 40 people were wounded when a group of anti-Morsi protesters tried to storm the local offices of the political arm of the president’s fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, the most powerful political force in Egypt.
It was the first reported death from the street battles over the decrees, officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
On Monday, thousands gathered in Damanhoor for the teenager’s funeral, while in Cairo thousands more marched through Tahrir square for the funeral of another young Egyptian killed in clashes with police in the capital. Tahrir was the birthplace of last year’s uprising that toppled authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak.
An informal truce between the police and protesters staging a sit-in in the square allowed the funeral to go ahead peacefully. The sit-in, which has hundreds of participants, is aimed at forcing Morsi to back down.
Morsi’s office said in a statement that he had ordered the country’s top prosecutor to investigate the teenager’s death, along with that of the man killed in Cairo last week during demonstrations to mark the anniversary of deadly protests last year that called for an end to the then-ruling military.
The judiciary, the main target of Morsi’s edicts, has pushed back, calling the decrees a power grab and an “assault” on the branch’s independence. Judges and prosecutors stayed away from many courts in Cairo and other cities on Sunday and Monday.
Morsi supporters insist the measures were necessary to prevent the courts, which already dissolved the elected lower house of parliament, from delaying efforts to bring stability by disbanding the panel writing the new constitution, as judges were considering doing. Both the parliament and the constitutional assembly are dominated by Islamists.
Morsi, an Islamist, accuses Mubarak loyalists in the judiciary of seeking to thwart the revolution’s goals. His Thursday edicts bar the judiciary from disbanding the constitutional assembly or parliament’s upper house.
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