Cairo: The Muslim Brotherhood has stepped up its campaign against an interim constitution declared by Egypt’s ruling military that curtails the powers of the next president, leading protests on Tuesday in Cairo and other cities.

The protests marked the opening of the possible next chapter in Egypt’s turmoil — a power struggle between the Muslim Brotherhood, which claims its candidate won this weekend’s presidential run-off, and the generals, who have carved out for themselves a status as the ultimate rulers even after they nominally hand over authorities to the new president on by July 1.

Brotherhood supporters are also protesting a court ruling last week that dissolved parliament, where the group was the largest bloc with just under half the seats.

On Tuesday, a handful of lawmakers made symbolic attempts to enter parliament, but were met by a locked gate and a line of anti-riot soldiers on the other side.

The court ruling has been endorsed by the military, whose leader, Field Marshal Hussain Tantawi, issued a decree dissolving the legislature. The Brotherhood and its Islamist allies dismissed the decree on the ground that the military ruler had no right to issue it less than two weeks before the scheduled transfer of power to civilians.

 

Anti-military protests

Spokesmen for the campaign of Mohammad Mursi, the Brotherhood presidential candidate, said other political groups joined anti-military protests. April 6, one of the main revolutionary groups behind last year’s uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak’s regime, also participated.

The Cairo stock market fell for the second straight day, down 4.2 per cent on the main index Tuesday and shedding 8.3 billion LE, over worries about the political instability.

The campaign spokesmen repeated their claim that Mursi, a US-trained engineer, won 52 per cent of the votes compared to 48 by Ahmad Shafiq, Mubarak’s last prime minister and a career air force officer.

The election commission will announce the final, official results on Thursday. The Shafiq campaign has not acknowledged defeat and charges that results issued by the rival camp are untrue.

Besides curtailing the powers of the next president, the generals’ declaration shields the military from civilian oversight of its affairs, grants it control of the national budget as well as the process of drafting a constitution.

If Mursi’s victory is officially confirmed, it would be the first victory of an Islamist as head of state in the stunning wave of pro-democracy uprisings that swept the Middle East the past year. But the military’s moves to retain power sharpen the possibility of confrontation and more of the turmoil that has beset Egypt since Mubarak’s overthrow.

Implicit in the new political timeline spelled out in the constitutional declaration the next president might serve only one year of his four-year term and that the generals would remain in power at least until early next year. The next president has also been stripped of the title “Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces,” giving the military near total independence from the executive branch.

The declaration says preparations for a new general election must start within a month of adopting a permanent constitution in a nationwide vote, something that is not likely to happen before late this year.

With a new constitution widely expected to redefine the nation’s political system, including the powers of the legislative and executive branches, new presidential elections will most likely be inevitable soon thereafter.

The declaration gives the generals the right to replace the 100-member panel selected by the dissolved legislature last week to draft a new constitution. Liberals and others have boycotted the panel to protest what they said was its domination by Islamists, the same reason that led to the dissolution of a previous panel by a court ruling.