CAIRO: Egypt’s new prime minister edged closer to forming a cabinet yesterday as supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohammed Mursi vowed to keep fighting for his reinstatement with further protests.
Hazem Al Beblawi held talks with candidates for ministerial posts accompanied by vice president Mohamed ElBaradei and centre-left lawyer Ziad Bahaa Eldin, who is in the running for the post of deputy prime minister for economic affairs, the official Mena news agency reported. The consultations will continue on Sunday.
The new cabinet’s top priorities will be to restore security, ensure the flow of goods and services and prepare for parliamentary and presidential elections, said Beblawi. The premier is working according to a roadmap drafted by the military which overthrew Morsi on July 3 after millions took to the streets calling on him to step down.
Mursi, the country’s first freely elected president, was accused of concentrating power in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, sending the economy into free fall and failing to protect minorities.
Mursi’s supporters say his removal from power was a flagrant violation of democratic principles and refuse to join an interim government as tens of thousands have taken to the streets to demand his reinstatement.
“There will be another mass protest on Monday,” said Tareq Al Mursi, a Brotherhood spokesman said yesterday, a day after tens of thousands of Mursi’s supporters rallied in Cairo.
Protesters will also march on Monday to the Cairo headquarters of the elite Republican Guard, scene of deadly clashes last week, the spokesman said, insisting it would be “peaceful.”
Several thousand people attended a protest in central Tunis yesterday, called by the country’s ruling Islamist party Ennahda, against the military coup that deposed Morsi.
On Friday, Washington and Berlin called on the Egyptian military to release Mursi, who was detained just hours after the coup and is held in a secret location.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the United States agreed with Germany’s earlier appeal for Mursi to be released and was “publicly” making the same request.
Psaki said Washington wanted “an end to restrictions on Morsi’s whereabouts”, while Germany suggested that the International Committee of the Red Cross should be granted access to him.
Rival demonstrators rallied in the capital on Friday, but while there had been fears of fresh violence, the evening passed off peacefully. Tens of thousands of protesters gathered outside the Rabaa Al Adawiya mosque in Cairo’s Nasr City to pray and break their fast together on the first weekend of the holy month of Ramadan. AFP
