Newsmaker: Egypt Army Chief May Have More Sway Than President
A picture popular with protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square captures how many view the military man who has ruled Egypt since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown last year.
Half the face is of the ousted president juxtaposed to the other portion showing Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the 76-year-old who was Mubarak’s defence minister for 20 years.
Tantawi had been due formally to hand over to Mohamed Mursi after the Muslim Brotherhood man is sworn in as Egypt’s first freely elected president on Saturday. But army sources said the handover had been delayed, giving no reason or a new date.
After ending Mubarak’s 30-year rule 16 months ago, many Egyptians came to feel they had replaced him with a carbon copy, just as reluctant to relinquish power or the extensive business interests and privileges built up by the army over six decades.
Even as voters chose Mursi in a run-off vote on June 16 and 17, the army council led by Tantawi was clawing back powers from the presidency with a declaration limiting the presidential remit. To many it smacked of a “soft” military coup.
“The military hands over power, to the military,” wrote Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper at the time, mocking Tantawi’s oft-repeated promise to hand over to an elected president by July 1.
Instead, the paper noted, the “constitutional declaration” means the generals will probably have lawmaking powers until 2013, given a timetable it laid out for drafting a constitution, holding a referendum on it and, finally, electing a parliament to replace the Islamist-led one dissolved by a court this month.