Egypt’s Mounting Crisis
As the head of Egypt’s government while angry, violent protests consume the capital city, President Mohamed Morsi finds himself all alone.
Egypt’s revolution is being torn asunder, so angry are urban, secular Egyptians about Morsi’s bald power-grab—and the draft constitution he is trying to foist on the nation. Street fighting between thousands of urban Egyptians who oppose him and Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood brethren killed at least six and wounded nearly 500 others.
Morsi is desperate. On Sunday he annulled most of the decree that had granted him near-dictatorial powers. But he’s still been talking about imposing marital law, at least until the draft constitution his Islamist allies in Parliament quickly threw together is put up for a vote later this month.
The problem is, he’s the head of a government staffed by people who worked for former president Hosni Mubarak most of their lives. For all that time, the Muslim Brotherhood was the enemy.
Now, Morsi doesn’t trust the Interior Ministry—the home agency for police and other security services—to stand with him. Morsi dismissed the Army’s commanding generals earlier this year, trying to show them who’s boss. For decades, one of the Army’s key missions had been to protect the nation against the Muslim Brotherhood.