Supporters of Muslim Brotherhood protesting in support of ousted president Mohammed Mursi outside Rabaa Al Adawiya mosque in Cairo yesterday.
CAIRO: Egypt’s army-installed interim leader set out plans yesterday for new elections by early next year, which were immediately rejected by the ousted president’s Muslim Brotherhood, drawing a stern warning from the military.
The Brotherhood, which has refused to accept the overthrow of its champion Mohammed Mursi, Egypt’s first freely elected president, slammed the transition blueprint as an attempt to salvage last week’s coup which would do nothing to end an increasingly bloody conflict.
The army warned it would brook no disruption to what it acknowledged would be a “difficult” transition. The military has come under huge international pressure to swiftly install an interim civilian administration, pressure that has only intensified since gunfire killed 51 Islamist protesters outside a Cairo army base on Monday.
The blueprint unveiled by caretaker President Adly Mansour is intended to replace the controversial Islamist-drafted constitution which he suspended following last week’s coup.
A committee will be set up to make final improvements to the draft before it is put to a referendum. Parliamentary elections will then follow within three months and Mansour will announce a date for a presidential election once the new parliament has convened.
The Brotherhood rejected the plan outright. “A constitutional decree by a man appointed by putschists... brings the country back to square one,” senior Brotherhood official Essam Al Erian said in a Facebook posting.
But the army warned against any disruption of the plans. A statement read out on state television said neither the armed forces nor the people of Egypt would accept “the stalling or disruption” of this “difficult and complex” period.
The Brotherhood held fresh protests yesterday against both Mursi’s ouster. “Each province is organising funerals and rallies and each province will have a central sit-in,” Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad said. At Cairo’s Rabaa Al Adawiya mosque, where Mursi supporters have been camping out for nearly two weeks, several thousand demonstrators, worn out by the heat, listened to speakers urging them to remain steadfast in their demands for his reinstatement.
The Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, had called for “an uprising by the great people of Egypt against those trying to steal their revolution with tanks” in response to Monday’s killings. In the Suez Canal city of Port Said, gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on a church early yesterday, wounding a man, witnesses said.
AFP
