Egyptian supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and ousted president Mohammed Mursi protest demanding his reinstatement as they gather close to the Egyptian cabinet headquarters in Cairo yesterday.
CAIRO: Egypt’s new government got down to work yesterday faced with a raft of daunting challenges including restoring security, as angry loyalists of ousted Islamist president Mohammed Mursi rallied against the caretaker administration.
Several thousand demonstrators gathered just a few hundred metres from the cabinet headquarters, near Cairo’s Tahrir Square, shouting anti-government slogans and waving banners.
The protesters then marched in the direction of Cairo University, across the Nile, with no incidents reported. “Retaliation for the martyrs,” and “Down with military rule” read some of the banners.
The demonstration came as EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton held a series of meetings in Cairo with Egypt’s new leaders, including interim President Adly Mansour, vice president Mohamed ElBaradei and army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.
She was due to meet members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party.
Spokesman Michael Mann described Ashton’s meeting with Mansour as “good and useful”.
Ashton said the EU wanted “a quick return to the democratic process, and a full inclusive process, while stressing “the need to get the economy going “as quickly as possible,” Mann said.
Also on the diplomatic front, US Secretary of State John Kerry said during a visit to Jordan yesterday, it was too early to judge yet the future course of Egypt following Mursi’s ouster.
“Very clearly order needs to be restored, stability needs to be restored, rights need to be protected ... and the country needs to be able to return to normal business,” Kerry told a press conference in Amman.
“We are concerned about political arrests and we are concerned about people being able to participate,” Kerry said.
He added it was “much too early to make pronouncements or judge where it’s going to go.”
The Brotherhood, the influential movement from which Mursi hails, along with the ultra-conservative Al Nur party, refused to take part in the new administration, and has rejected it as illegitimate.
The 34-member cabinet was sworn in on Tuesday, with Sisi, the general behind the popularly backed coup that overthrew Mursi on July 3, named first deputy prime minister and minister of defence.
Kamal Ganzouri, who served as prime minister under Hosni Mubarak, the former strongman ousted in the 2011 uprising, was appointed presidential adviser.
Political analyst Samer Shehata said among the pressing issues for the new government are Egypt’s budget deficit, reforming the interior ministry, establishing the rule of law. clearing the streets of protesters and restoring security in Sinai.
The restive peninsula has suffered a wave of attacks, with six soldiers and two civilians wounded late on Tuesday when militants fired at an army checkpoint in the border town of Rafah, according to security sources.
The swearing-in ceremony of Egypt’s caretaker government, which includes three women and three Coptic Christians, took place on Tuesday just hours after deadly overnight clashes between the security forces and Mursi’s supporters in Cairo.
Officials said seven people were killed and 261 wounded in the clashes. Hundreds of protesters were also arrested, bringing to more than 1,000 the number of Mursi supporters detained in Cairo alone since the military coup.
The Brotherhood’s deputy leader Khairat El-Shater and several other senior Islamists have been remanded in custody for 15 days, judicial sources said yesterday. Mursi himself was detained by the military just hours after the coup and his whereabouts remain unknown.
Many of those arrested have since been released, but Amnesty International said hundreds had been denied their legal rights, with some beaten upon arrest, subjected to electric shocks or hit with rifle butts. Ashton’s visit follows that on Monday of US envoy William Burns, the most senior American official to visit since the July 3 coup.
Washington has refrained from saying Mursi was the victim of a coup, which would legally require a freeze on some $1.5bn in US military and economic assistance to Cairo. During his single year of rule, Mursi was accused of concentrating power in Brotherhood hands, sending the economy into freefall and failing to protect minorities. AFP
