Conflicting reports emerged from Egypt this weekend about the potential appointment of opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei as interim prime minister, while allies of ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi committed to indefinite mass action to restore Morsi to the presidency. The combination has many protracted confusion:
Egypt remains in a state of political confusion as an attempt to replace ousted president Mohamed Morsi failed at the first hurdle. Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog was named as interim prime minister on Saturday, but doubts were cast over his appointment when the al-Nour party, the second largest Islamist force in Egypt, indicated it would not co-operate.
The Muslim Brotherhood helped propel Mr Morsi to power as Egypt’s first democratically elected leader and believes he was ousted in an illegitimate military coup. ‘The people are ready for martyrdom to restore legitimacy,’ said Abdullah Shehatah, a senior leader of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Brotherhood’s political arm.
Violence steadily escalating throughout the weekend and into Monday, with more than 50 people being killed on Sunday. A crowd of Morsi supporters after some of the crowd tried to storm the Republican Guard’s Cairo headquarters, where Morsi is rumored to be under detention. The army rushed to deny responsibility, emphasizing that its soldiers were limited to tear gas and warning shots.
Meanwhile details continue to emerge of the weeks and days leading up to the army’s actions against the Muslim Brotherhood-linked president. The New York Times reported this weekend that both the Egyptian military and the U.S. had urged Morsi to build an inclusive government that would expand representation beyond his narrow Islamist coalition. Morsi ‘declined’:
when the protests took off last fall, General Sisi signaled that his departure from politics might not be so permanent. Without consulting Mr. Morsi, the general publicly invited all the country’s fractious political factions — from social democrats to ultraconservative sheiks — to a meeting to try to come to a compromise on a more inclusive government. Mr. Morsi quashed the idea, advisers said, to avoid drawing the generals back into politics…
United States officials had repeatedly urged Mr. Morsi to compromise with the opposition and include it in government. In December, President Obama met with Mr. Haddad, Mr. Morsi’s foreign policy adviser, in the Oval Office to deliver that message, Mr. Morsi’s advisers said. At one point, they said, Mr. Obama offered to intervene with the opposition leaders, either Mohamed ElBaradei, the former United Nations diplomat, or Amr Moussa, a former foreign minister under Mr. Mubarak. But Mr. Morsi declined.
The resulting deadlock led to the massive protests which began on June 27 and culminated in the sweeping June 30 demonstrations. Millions of Morsi opponents flooded Egypt’s streets, eventually leading to the military’s moves against the then-president.
More than 100 people have been killed across the country since the protests began on June 27.
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