http://www.businessinsider.com/egyptian-stock-market-falls-nearly-10-after-morsi-decrees-2012-11
http://www.juancole.com/2012/11/egypt-judiciary-political-rivals-crowds-mobilize-against-pres-morsi.html
http://blogs.aljazeera.com/liveblog?f%5B0%5D=field_ns_topic%3A155
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/24/egypt-judges-condemn-mohamed-morsi-powers
http://www.juancole.com/2012/11/morsis-in-second-coup-provokes-mass-protest-in-egypt.html
http://rt.com/news/egypt-morsi-impeachment-constitutional-court-375/
and....
http://rt.com/news/egypt-protests-morsi-march-420/
Photo from twitter.com user @3araab
Photo from twitter.com user @ibnezra
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/22/mohamed-morsi-mubarak-retrial-egypt
The Egyptian Stock Market Got DESTROYED Today
On its first day of trading following the surprise Thursday evening announcement that President Morsi would expand his power in significant ways, raising the specter that the Democratic revolution that ousted Mubarak could go be set back, Egypt's stock market got destroyed by nearly 10% (HT: AP).
Here's a one-day chart of Egypt's CASE-30 index via Bloomberg.
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http://www.juancole.com/2012/11/egypt-judiciary-political-rivals-crowds-mobilize-against-pres-morsi.html
Egypt: Judiciary, Political Rivals, Crowds Mobilize against Pres. Morsi
Posted on 11/25/2012 by Juan
The executive order issued by President Muhammad Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party last Thursday has thrown the country into substantial turmoil, with demonstrations, clashes and civil strikes throughout much of the country.
The struggle against Morsi’s 7-point executive order is being fought on four levels:
1. Morsi’s rivals for political power, Amr Moussa, Hamdeen Sabahi and Mohammed Elbaradei, have formed a committee to monitor the situatio, according to Alarabiya television in Arabic. There are some reports that the Muslim Brotherhood is planning to file charges against them (of treason? corruption?; if so that would be very bad and a big further step toward dictatorship). Leaders of parties such as the Wafd, the Ghad (Tomorrow), the Socialists, and etc., have come out against Morsi’s move.
2. The judiciary has mobilized, including many judges and attorneys. Thejudges have declared a court strike all over the country. Some judges are coming to the capital for a big judicial congress. The public prosecutor fired by Morsi, Abdel Magid Mahmoud, has filed a lawsuit against the president.Euronews has a video report:
In a political blow to Morsi, his own Justice Minister, Ahmad Makki, said that he agreed with the reservations of jurists about the sweeping character of Morsi’s decree. He said he trusts that the president had good intentions, wanting to move along the drafting of the constitution and the democratic process. Makki will likely play a major role in mediating between Morsi and the enraged judges.
3. The iconic Tahrir Square protesters are back in the square and are planning a ‘million-person march’ for Tuesday. On Sunday morning, there were clashes between them and police at Qasr al-Aini near the downtown offices of the American University of Cairo, with protesters pelting police with stones. They chanted, “The people want the fall of the regime,” and “Fall, fall, the regime of the Supreme Guide” (a reference to Muhammad Badie, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who they assume is ordering Morsi to act this way). Here is raw footage of the Tahrir area on Saturday:
The difficulty that the young revolutionaries may have in allying with Egypt’s legal establishment (most of them had been pro-Mubarak) was illustrated Saturday night when they threw out of Tahrir Square the head of the country’s Lawyers’ Guild, who was protesting Morsi but was considered too close to Mubarak for the taste of the other demonstrators.
4. Anti-Brotherhood political forces in the provinces are attacking Muslim Brotherhood offices and rallying to support the court strikes. On Saturday, there was a virtual war in the streets in the provincial Delta depot city of Damanhour. The Muslim Brotherhood said 14 of its members were injured defending the HQ of the organization from foes who wanted to burn it down. Earlier on Saturday demonstrators had cut off the rail line through the town. The courts in Damanhour also recessed with no indication of when they would be in session again. Here is video:
Morsi has a rural power base in the Muslim Brotherhood and among many who voted for him despite not being members of the Brotherhood. But in the Delta there are a number of traditionalist Muslim towns hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood (think of traditionalists as like Catholics and the fundamentalists as more like Protestants). And, his critics are more powerful in the capital itself, and so far during the Arab Upheavals it is the capital that has made the final decision.
The controversy centers on Morsi’s attempt to exempt both himself and the originally 100-member constitution-drafting body, the constituent assembly, from judicial review by Egypt’s higher courts. The president says that the constitution will be finished by March 1, and that when it comes into effect he will give up any powers he has assumed in favor of the constitutional ones. Another issue is his dismissal of the public prosecutor and appointment of a new one, close to the Muslim Brotherhood. But this latter step, while it has angered the legal establishment in Egypt, isn’t where the New Left seems to be making its stand.
Although Morsi’s former rival for the presidency, Ahmad Shafiq, maintains that there is no such thing as a temporary dictatorship, there is actually no real reason to doubt that Morsi will submit to the new constitution. As Ellis Goldberg points out, it is to some large extent modeled on the current French constitution, except that the draft actually reduces the president’s powers in favor of the prime minister. And, far from being above the law, the president in the draft constitution can be overruled by a simple majority of both the new senate and the lower house. Judicial officials will name candidates to judgeships, with the president choosing the final awardees of these posts– and while he has wide latitude to choose among the names presented, he is limited by the nominating committee, composed of independent jurists.
From Morsi’s point of view, the struggle is over the autonomy of the Constituent Assembly now drafting the constitution, which Morsi appears to have feared might be dissolved by the supreme administrative court (just as it dissolved the elected parliament last fall). Putting the work of the Constituent Assembly beyond the purview of the courts ensures that its Muslim Brotherhood majority can shape the future of the country. What is odd is that I am unaware of any big demonstrations centering on the Constituent Assembly or its draft constitution.
How to understand the vehement reaction against Morsi’s executive order? I think it is because, like Shafiq, many Egyptians do not trust him to give back powers once he has acquired them, and so they fear that he is refashioning himself as a dictator. When Morsi took power, he promised not to try to legislate or to impose things on the country, aware that in the absence of a legislature or a constitution, people in Egypt would be touchy about anything that looked high-handed. He has abandoned that earlier caution, most unwisely, and now does look high-handed. Some of his critics fear he plans to reinstate the parliament elected in fall, 2011, which the courts dissolved on the grounds that the Brotherhood and the Salafi Nur Party illegally ran party candidates for independent seats. A Muslim Brotherhood president with a Muslim Brotherhood parliament would place a lot of power in the hands of the fundamentalists, and they would be curbed only by the secular courts and the military, both of which Morsi is attempting to defang– raising the specter of a one-party state.
http://blogs.aljazeera.com/liveblog?f%5B0%5D=field_ns_topic%3A155
Egypt Live Blog
We bring you the latest news from our correspondents and other sources inside Egypt and across the region.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/24/egypt-judges-condemn-mohamed-morsi-powers
Egypt's top judges condemn Mohamed Morsi power grab
Supreme judicial council suspends all court offices and says president made 'unprecedented assault' on its independence
Email
Egypt's most senior judges have condemned President Mohamed Morsifor granting himself sweeping new powers which they say amount to an "unprecedented assault" on the independence of the judiciary.
The supreme judicial council said work would be suspended in all courts and prosecution offices until the decree passed by the president earlier this week was reversed.
The announcement by the top judges, most of whom were appointed by former President Hosni Mubarak, came after tens of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets on Friday to protest against Morsi's decree.
The judicial body had previously urged the president on Thursday to "distance this decree from everything that violates the judicial authority".
The new edicts give the president near-absolute power and immunity from appeals in courts for any decisions or laws he declares until a new constitution and parliament is in place.
Opponents of the decree have called for a large-scale demonstration on Tuesday. In a second day of protests on the streets of Cairo on Saturday, activists threw rocks at riot police, while a few dozen people manned makeshift barricades to keep traffic out of Tahrir Square.
The decree has polarised opinion between the newly empowered Islamists, represented by Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, and their opponents. Leftwing and liberal parties have called for an open-ended sit-in aimed at "toppling" the decree.
"We are facing a historic moment in which we either complete our revolution or we abandon it to become prey for a group that has put its narrow party interests above the national interest," the liberal Constitution party said in a statement.
Anti-Morsi demonstrators, who accuse the president of having launched a "constitutional coup" on Thursday, were reported to have set fire to the offices of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party, to which Morsi belongs, in the Suez Canal cities of Suez and Port Said on Friday.
Clashes also erupted on Friday between the two sides in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, the southern city of Assiut and Giza, prompting Essam el-Erian, a leading figure in the FJP, to condemn the attacks as "acts of thuggery hiding behind political forces". While in Cairo, the two opposing camps gathered in large rival rallies. In a packed Tahrir Square, youths opposed to the decree fought intermittent battles with police firing volleys of teargas outside the French Lycée and American University. Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood meanwhile bussed in supporters from across the country to hear him address a rally outside the presidential palace in Heliopolis.
Morsi's decree orders the retrial of former president Hosni Mubarak, officials and security force members accused of killings during the country's revolution. Controversially, it also exempts all of Morsi's decisions from legal challenge until a new parliament is elected, as well as offering the same protection to the Islamist-dominated constituent assembly, which is drawing up the country's new constitution.
Morsi's aides said the presidential decree was to speed up a protracted democratic transition that has been hindered by legal obstacles. Morsi's rivals, however, were quick to condemn him as a new autocratic pharaoh who wanted to impose his Islamist vision on Egypt.
Morsi made the move in a week in which he had been buoyed by accolades from around the world for mediating a truce between Hamas and Israel. "I am for all Egyptians. I will not be biased against any son of Egypt," Morsi said on a stage outside the presidential palace, adding that he was working for social and economic stability and the rotation of power. "Opposition in Egypt does not worry me, but it has to be real and strong," he said in response to his critics.
http://www.juancole.com/2012/11/morsis-in-second-coup-provokes-mass-protest-in-egypt.html
Morsi’s in Second Coup Provokes Mass Protest in Egypt
Posted on 11/23/2012 by Juan
Egypt’s president Muhammad Morsi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s civil wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, issued a wide-ranging set of decrees on Thursday that greatly enhanced his power and would have led to a constitutional crisis if there were a constitution. He seems likely, in any case, to have set off substantial social turmoil, on the eve of the second anniversary of the beginning of the movement against his predecessor. He appears buoyed by the close working relationship he developed with US president Barack Obama during the Gaza crisis and by his success in facing down Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on the question of an Israeli land invasion of Gaza.
Prominent Egyptian liberals and leftists denounced the decrees and pledged to go to the streets to overturn them.
Among the steps Morsi took was to fire the public prosecutor (roughly, attorney general), Mubarak holdover Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, replacing him with Talaat Ibrahim Abdallah (who is alleged to be the brother-in-law of the vice president, who is from the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party).
A constituent assembly had been appointed by the parliament before it was dissolved, but it was found illicit by the courts, which ruled that parliamentarians could not serve on it. It was therefore reformed to exclude the Freedom and Justice Party members of parliament who had tried to dominate it. This body is still hammering out a constitution, and Morsi on Thursday extended its deadline from the end of the year to the end of February.
Morsi appears to have feared that the constitutional court might dissolve the constituent assembly, which has a Muslim Brotherhood bias and from which prominent secularists, Christians and even fair-minded Muslims have increasingly resigned. This crumbling of support for the body and its work, which is said to have restricted personal freedoms *more* than the 1971 constitution, may have opened it to court action on its legitimacy. One of Morsi’s decrees therefore forbade the courts to impugn the constitution-drafting body.
The 7 decrees can be summarized as follows:
1) All officials of the Mubarak regime who were implicated in violence against protesters will be investigated yet again and possibly retried.
2) None of Morsi’s executive orders issued since June 30, 2012, can be abrogated by the courts and all suits launched against them are hereby dismissed.
3) The public prosecutor (~attorney general) will be appointed for 4 years by the judiciary.
4) The Constituent Assembly will be granted an extra 2 months to finish drafting the constitution.
5) No court may dissolve the Constituent Assembly or the upper house of parliament.
6) The president may take any steps he feels necessary to preserve the revolution, or national unity, or the country’s security.
7) This decree will be published in the Official Gazette.
The new public prosecutor announced that he would retry Hosni Mubarak and former Interior Minister Habib Adly. Many officials appear destined by these decrees for retrial, apparently on the theory that former prosecutor Mahmoud had run interference for them. Morsi is especially interested in looking again at officials and police accused of using violence against demonstrators during the movement to overthrow Mubarak. He further pledged to pay pensions to those wounded or made disabled during the revolution.
The retrial of officials and security personnel who ordered violence against the protesters is a demand of the Egyptian masses, spearheaded by the New Left, and these steps appear to be aimed at pacifying the opposition. If so, Morsi badly misjudged how easy it would be to buy them off.
Secularists and leftists were furious at these decrees, and were especially anxious about no. 6 above, which is worrisomely vague and broad. Some called for Morsi to be impeached.
But the High Constitutional Court promptly denied that it had the prerogative of removing the president, though it seems to differ with him on whether it can dissolve the constituent assembly drafting the constitution.
Morsi’s rivals for the presidency in the first round of last May came out against these decrees. Leftist Hamdeen Sabahi, a favorite of the unions, denounced what he called an ‘unprecedented dictatorship.’ He worried that Morsi seemed poised to reinstate the Brotherhood-dominated parliament of fall, 2011, which the courts had dissolved for electoral fraud. The Brotherhood would then have two of the three branches of government without having to conduct new elections for the legislature.
The New Left organization, April 6, had typically avoided slamming the Brotherhood, fearing the Mubarak holdovers and the military much more. But on Thursday for the first time I noticed prominent April 6 leaders such as Asma Mahfouz denouncing Morsi. The New Left, the old Left, and the secularists are all calling for anti-Morsi protests in Tahrir Square on Friday.
These decrees are the second time Morsi has used his electoral victory of last June to challenge holdovers from the old Mubarak regime. In mid-August,Morsi weakened the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) by forcing its top officers to retire (including Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi and Army Chief of Staff Sami Anan). SCAF had attempted to declare itself the de facto legislature of the country, and had issued decrees curbing Morsi’s presidential prerogatives. Morsi appears to have connived with a second tier of officers less hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood, promising them high appointments if they supported his move against Tantawi’s circle. Morsi abrogated the ‘constitutional addendum’ that SCAF had issued in June, and we’ve never heard anything more about the officer corps being the legislature.
(The parliament elected in fall of 2011 was dissolved by the Egyptian constitutional court because the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi fundamentalists illegally ran party candidates for the one third of seats reserved for independents, allowing them to dominate the lower house).
http://rt.com/news/egypt-morsi-impeachment-constitutional-court-375/
Egypt's Constitutional Court looking to impeach Morsi - reports
Published: 23 November, 2012, 02:40
Edited: 23 November, 2012, 08:23
Edited: 23 November, 2012, 08:23
Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court in Cairo. (AFP Photo / Khaled Desouki)
and....
http://rt.com/news/egypt-protests-morsi-march-420/
Egyptian anti-Morsi ralliers clash with police, torch Muslim Brotherhood HQs (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
Published: 23 November, 2012, 16:37
TRENDS:
Arab world protests
Arab world protests
Photo from twitter.com user @MagButter
Photo from twitter.com user @3araab
Photo from twitter.com user @ibnezrahttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/22/mohamed-morsi-mubarak-retrial-egypt
Mohamed Morsi bars court challenges and orders Hosni Mubarak retrial
Egyptian president angers opponents with measures preventing courts from challenging any laws passed since he took office
Mohamed Morsi was instrumental in securing a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Photograph: Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images
Egypt's president, Mohamed Morsi, has granted himself far-reaching powers and immunity from legal oversight as he ordered the retrial ofHosni Mubarak over the killing of protesters during the country's revolution.
In a surprise move, Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who was instrumental in securing a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, issued a series of measures preventing Egypt's courts from challenging any laws or decrees passed since he assumed office in June.
The decrees prevent the courts from attempting to dissolve the upper house of parliament or the body tasked with drawing up the country's new constitution, both dominated by his Islamist allies.
The declaration came barely 24 hours after Morsi was praised by Barack Obama for his role in bringing the latest round of the Gaza conflict to an end.
There was outrage from Morsi's political opponents, including the prominent opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei, who accused him of usurping authority and becoming a "new pharaoh".
"Morsi today usurped all state powers and appointed himself Egypt's new pharaoh," ElBaradei wrote on his Twitter account. "A major blow to the revolution that could have dire consequences."
Abdel-Halim Qandil, editor of as-Sawt newspaper, told al-Jazeera TV: "Morsi was elected a president. Now he is behaving like a king. This is a coup against the Egyptian revolution."
Shadi Ghazali, a revolutionary activist, said: "Morsi said he was president of all Egyptians, but in fact he is president of the Muslim Brotherhood only."
The move is likely to fuel growing public criticism that Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood have monopolised power while doing little to tackle Egypt's endemic woes. Thousands of demonstrators gathered in central Cairo on Thursday to protest for a fourth day running against Morsi's policies and to criticise the Muslim Brotherhood.
The decree for a retrial of the former president Mubarak and other ex-regime officials accused of killing protesters is designed to appease anger at what is seen as the widespread impunity they have enjoyed in the courts. But Morsi's method of doing it is likely to lead to further polarisation in the still fragile country.
Defending the move, Gehad al-Hadad, a senior adviser to the Muslim Brotherhood, said the new laws would become "void" when Egypt had a new parliament and constitution.
The Muslim Brotherhood's website said the moves were necessary to "protect the revolution and achieve justice", and claimed Morsi did not "choose to have all powers" but the move was "forced" on him by the corrupt old Mubarak system.
The move was doubly surprising as until now Morsi, who has had the power to proclaim laws since the parliament's lower house was dissolved in June, has been extremely circumspect in the use of his authority.
The declaration comes in the midst of an increasingly acrimonious battle over the writing of Egypt's new constitution. Liberal and Christian members withdrew from the constituent assembly during the past week in protest at what they say is the hijacking of the process by Morsi's allies, who they fear are trying to push through a document that will have an Islamist slant, marginalising women and minority Christians and infringing on personal liberties.
The constituent assembly, tasked with drafting the new constitution, cannot now face a legal challenge that might lead to it being dissolved, and the parliament's upper house, the Shura council, has also been put beyond the scope of a legal challenge to its constitutionality.
Several courts are looking into cases demanding the dissolution of both bodies. Parliament's lower chamber, also dominated by Islamists, was dissolved in June by a court decision on the grounds that the rules governing its election were illegal.
Under the new powers – described as temporary until the new constitution is drawn up, a process that has been extended by two months – the president is "authorised to take any measures he sees fit in order to preserve the revolution, to preserve national unity or to safeguard national security".
The statement says "all constitutional declarations, laws and decrees made since Morsi assumed power … cannot be appealed or cancelled by any individual, or political or governmental body until a new constitution has been ratified and a new parliament has been elected. All lawsuits against them are declared void."
"We need stability and that's why we cannot afford to have this legal wrangling going on forever," Morsi's spokesman, Yasser Ali, told the Egyptian website al-Ahram. "The president wants to shorten the transitional period and have the new constitution and new people's assembly as soon as possible. This explains why [Morsi] wanted to give members of the constituent assembly more time to overcome their differences. The new declaration gives the assembly two more months to work on the constitutional draft."
He added: "Egypt's new constitutional declaration does not target any political group or person but is rather an attempt to achieve the demands of the 25 January revolution."
Heba Morayef, of Human Rights Watch, said judicial reform as well as holding those responsible for crimes during the revolution was to be welcomed, but the new powers were alarming.
"While it is a good decision to appoint a new public prosecutor and reopen these cases, this was not the way to do it. In the coming months these decrees mean he cannot effectively be challenged by the courts. And that's terrifying," she said.
Shadi Hamid, of the Brookings Institute thinktank, said: "This is not about amassing more power but preventing a challenge in the courts to the power he already he has. Morsi does not have much respect for those opposing him in any case. He sees them – and their use of the courts – as trouble-making and self-interested.
"He has a sense of democratic entitlement, His view is you've elected me for four years now get out of my way and let me do it. After four years if you don't like, elect someone else. But democratic entitlement can lead to demagoguery. He has been very careful up till now how he has used his powers, but this time he has overstepped himself."
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