This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/world/middleeast/egypt-elections.html

The article has changed 17 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 10 Version 11
Egypt’s Leaders Select Premier and Plan for Quick Elections Egypt’s Leaders Select Premier and Plan for Quick Elections
(about 7 hours later)
CAIRO — Egypt’s military-led interim government laid out an accelerated six-month timetable on Tuesday for a return to civilian democracy, and chose a liberal economist as temporary prime minister, part of an intensified effort to assure Egyptians and the world about its intentions in the aftermath of the mass killing of more than 50 Islamist protesters. CAIRO — Egypt’s new military-led government enlisted internationally recognized figures to serve as its public face and promised swift elections on Tuesday, but introduced a transitional plan that was widely criticized as muddled, authoritarian and rushed.
But the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies rejected the timetable, calling any effort by the interim government illegitimate because of the military’s ouster last week of Mohamed Morsi, the Islamist president, who remains under arrest. A top Muslim Brotherhood official, Essam el-Erian, said such a timetable would take Egypt “back to zero.” The so-called road map, in the form of a “constitutional declaration” by the military-appointed president, elicited immediate opposition from civilian leaders across the political spectrum — including the liberals and activists who sought the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, the faction of ultraconservative Islamists who joined them and the many thousands protesting to demand his reinstatement. The declaration, however, made clear that the government drew its authority only from the military commander who executed the takeover, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi. The interim president, Adli Mansour, a senior judge, cited the general’s brief statement as the basis of his own authority, and in confirmation the general’s words were printed as law in the official Gazette.
The Brotherhood also denounced the appointment of a new prime minister, Hazem el-Beblawy, a prominent economic consultant who had supported the 2011 revolution that ousted the old authoritarian government of Hosni Mubarak. “It is now officially a coup,” Nathan Brown, a political scientist specializing in Egyptian law at George Washington University, wrote in assessing the text.
Gehad el-Haddad, a Brotherhood spokesman, said Mr. Beblawy was still the face of Egypt’s traditional elite, and that his selection had revealed the interim government’s true purpose as an “anti-revolution enshrined by a military coup.” The military-led government widened its crackdown on Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters a day after security forces shot hundreds of them and killed more than 50 at a sit-in to demand his reinstatement. Security officials blamed the Islamists for instigating the lopsided clashes, and as part of its investigation of the episode ordered the arrests of 650 leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s mainstream Islamist movement, and of Gamaa Islamiyya, a more conservative and once-violent group.
The announcement of the timetable came as Egypt’s judicial authorities began to interrogate nearly 650 suspects detained during the deadly mayhem in Cairo on Monday, the worst episode of violence since the revolution more than two years ago that toppled Mr. Mubarak, the predecessor to Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president. The officials said they had also arrested more of the former president’s top advisers. Brotherhood officials said they had lost contact with about 250 members of their leadership, in addition to the dozens — including Mr. Morsi — known to be detained.
Ahram Online, the Web site of Egypt’s leading newspaper, said 60 judicial investigators were looking into the causes of the violence, which left at least 51 pro-Morsi demonstrators dead and hundreds wounded. The police and armed forces have accused Islamist assailants of instigating the fighting, in which they said one police officer was killed and 42 soldiers were wounded. The Muslim Brotherhood and its allies have accused the interim government of committing an unprovoked massacre of unarmed protesters. At the same time, Egypt received a crucial financial lifeline from two oil-rich Arab monarchies that have made no secret of their fears of both Arab Spring democracy movements and the Muslim Brotherhood. The United Arab Emirates said it would provide a grant of $1 billion and an interest-free loan of $2 billion, while Saudi Arabia was reportedly working on providing an additional $5 billion. The donations are needed urgently because the turmoil surrounding Mr. Morsi’s overthrow has pushed the teetering Egyptian economy closer to the brink of collapse.
In an effort to prop up the interim government, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on Tuesday pledged billions of dollars in emergency aid to Egypt, which has suffered a traumatic economic decline and depleted Treasury over the past few years as tourism and foreign investment have collapsed. The governments of Persian Gulf Arab countries, oil-rich kingdoms that strongly opposed Arab Spring political sentiments at home, had longstanding relationships with Mr. Mubarak’s old government. The official news agency of the United Arab Emirates, WAM, said it was providing a $1 billion grant and a $2 billion interest-free loan. Reuters reported that the Saudis had approved a packaged totaling $5 billion. The new appointments, including a liberal economist as prime minister and the diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei as a vice president for foreign relations, appeared intended to reassure the Western allies and donors Egypt must depend on.
WAM said a delegation visiting with Egypt’s interim president, Adli Mansour, had “wished him success in his mission and more progress and prosperity for the Egyptian people in order to pursue its drive towards development, progress and prosperity, enabling the country to play its civilized leading role in Arab and international arenas.” The new prime minister, Hazem el-Beblawi, is a prominent economist who served as finance minister under an earlier interim government. A founding member of the Social Democratic Party, he has criticized former President Hosni Mubarak and Mr. Morsi as failing to move fast enough to open up the economy, reform Egypt’s bloated and unaffordable subsidy programs and provide for the poor.
The political transition timetable announced Tuesday would overhaul Egypt’s suspended Constitution, elect a new Parliament and choose a president all in the space of about six months. Mr. Beblawi is ideally suited to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund over a package of changes tied to a pending $4.8 billion loan, a deal that seemed out of reach after Mr. Morsi’s ouster but is still considered essential to save the economy. With a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne, Mr. Beblawi has written three books on Middle East economics, worked as a senior official of the United Nations and advised the Arab Monetary Fund. He resigned after four months as finance minister under the previous military-led transitional government — after Mr. Mubarak’s ouster — after soldiers shot dozens of mostly Coptic Christian demonstrators and the generals blamed them for scaring their troops.
The release of the new timetable, issued in the name of Mr. Mansour, Adli Mansour, appeared intended to counter doubts about the democratic promises of the generals who removed Mr. Morsi from power. A restoration of a civilian democracy could become a critical determinant of whether the United States continues foreign aid to Egypt. Before the current crackdown, Mr. Beblawi had also welcomed the overthrow of Mr. Mubarak as providing an opportunity for Islamists to enter the democratic process. “The positive thing that resulted from this was that it gave a chance for the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islam, which have always been persecuted and wrongfully treated for a long time,” he said in an interview published last month in an English language-newspaper here.
Under United States law, if Washington officials deem the generals’ takeover to be a “coup” or decides that Cairo is moving away from democracy, then the Egyptian military stands to lose about $1.3 billion a year in American aid. Mr. ElBaradei, who won a Nobel Prize for his work with the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, was the new government’s first choice for prime minister. But his appointment was opposed by the ultraconservative Islamist Al Nour party, which had agreed to back Mr. Morsi’s ouster. After Mr. ElBaradei’s rejection — while he was on his way to his swearing-in, the Islamist party’s leader said — the government cycled through two other candidates before persuading Mr. Beblawi to take the job.
In Washington, the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, said it was “cautiously encouraged by the preliminary plan that was put forward by the interim authorities, and we encourage all parties to participate in dialogue and reconciliation rather than conflict and to resist decisions that would exclude them from the process going forward.” The new “constitutional declaration” laid out an election schedule that analysts called implausibly speedy. The plan calls for a panel of 10 jurists — 6 judges and 4 law professors — to present a sweeping package of amendments in just one month. A group of 50 representatives of various government institutions, parties, guilds and social groups — including 10 who are either women or young — will then review the text for two months. But it is not clear what power they have to make changes or how they will make their decisions. A national referendum on the charter is set for a month after that, with parliamentary elections within the next month.
Asked if the billions of dollars in new assistance to Egypt from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia had diminished the consequence of a possible cut in American aid, Mr. Carney rejected any linkage. Analysts faulted the plan as repeating and even compounding the missteps that botched Egypt’s first attempt to build a democracy. The compressed schedule leaves too little time for negotiation and consensus among Egypt’s already polarized political factions, they say, and the rush to elections all but ensures that the process will again become caught up in partisan feuds.
“The issue of our assistance to Egypt encompasses more than the dollar figure involved,” he told reporters at a daily briefing. “This is a longstanding partnership, a longstanding commitment to the nation of Egypt and to the Egyptian people by the United States, by both parties — major parties in the United States.” But this time the process is even more opaque and unrepresentative. It is unclear who will select the panel of 10 jurists or the 50 who will review their work on the new charter. Nor is the precise role of those 50 explained. Although normally representatives of the public settle on broad principles for experts to draft into a charter, the new plan calls for the experts to finish their work before the debate can begin, said Zaid Ali, an analyst at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, an intergovernmental group.
Previous schedules for Egypt’s political transition have often gone unmet, especially under the roughly 18 months of military rule that ended last summer. During the interim period, the declaration puts almost unchecked power in the hands of the president himself, who can issue legislation, constitutional declarations and ill-defined states of emergency. The declaration includes negligible protections for basic rights, including free speech or assembly.
Mr. Mansour continued to struggle to assemble an interim cabinet after a handful of candidates for prime minister dropped out or fell away. Before Mr. Mansour chose Mr. Beblawy on Tuesday, he had been preparing to swear in Mohamed ElBaradei, the Noble-prize winning former diplomat and prominent liberal. That plan went awry on Sunday when the one major Islamist party that has supported Mr. Morsi’s ouster refused to accept Mr. ElBaradei. Mr. Mansour then decided to make Mr. ElBaradei the interim vice president. It grants the military autonomy outside the president’s control. It appears to preserve provisions grounding the Constitution in specifically Sunni Islamic law — said to be the priority of the ultraconservative Islamists who backed the military takeover, although they disputed whether those provisions were adequate. And the declaration vests much of the power to shape Egypt’s next permanent charter in the highly conservative judges left in place after decades of authoritarianism.
Mr. Mansour, the chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court who was tapped by the generals as interim president, has not spoken publicly since he was sworn in. Just before midnight Monday, he issued a “constitutional declaration” laying out a transitional road map that called for the immediate formation of a 10-person committee to revise the charter approved in December. The panel would be composed of six judges chosen by three top courts — two from each — along with four Egyptian law professors. It was unclear who would pick the four professors. The Muslim Brotherhood denounced the declaration as a crime against democracy. Essam el-Erian, a Brotherhood leader still at large, said it would take Egypt’s transition “back to zero.”
The committee is expected to complete its revisions in about a month and then pass them to a larger committee of 50 people representing various government institutions, syndicates and social groups as well as other prominent figures. Some representatives would be selected by their institutions and the others chosen by Mr. Mansour and his cabinet. The military and the police would both pick representatives. The young organizers of the recent protests that preceded Mr. Morsi’s ouster said they were surprised by the charter and rejected it. The National Salvation Front, the coalition formed by Mr. ElBaradei and others in opposition to Mr. Morsi, said it had not been consulted and demanded unspecified changes.
If approved by the larger committee, the revisions would move to a public referendum after about three months, followed in about two more weeks by parliamentary elections. Mr. Mansour’s plan called for presidential elections about three months after ratification of the new charter. Al Nour, the ultraconservative Islamist party, said the text broke promises it had received before the takeover, including guarantees about preserving provisions touching Egypt’s “identity.” In a statement denouncing both the mass shooting and the president’s provisional charter, Al Nour accused the interim president of acting “extreme” and “dictatorial.” The party complained that the transition plan allowed him “to control all tools for amending the Constitution.”
Neither Mr. Mansour nor the military commander who named him, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, have said anything about how they plan to include Mr. Morsi’s legions of Islamist supporters in the political process. “What, if anything, have the country’s new authorities appeared to have learned from the mistakes of the past,” Mr. Ali wrote in an analysis. “Not much.”
But on Tuesday, the day before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan here, General Sisi delivered a version of the annual message customarily given by Egypt’s civilian president. He urged Muslims to “to live up to the principles” of the holiday in prayer and reflection, assuring all that “the road map is clearly defined and fixed” and “we are marching forward in confident steps in absolute transparency.”

Sarah Mousa contributed reporting from Cairo, and Rick Gladstone from New York.

Mr. Morsi’s party, formed by the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood, won nearly half the seats in the last parliamentary election, and more conservative Islamist groups known as Salafis won nearly a quarter more.
Mr. Morsi, who is now in military detention without charges at an undisclosed location, was elected with a little more than 51 percent of the vote more than a year ago. All acknowledged that his popularity has slipped, and millions marched in the streets on the anniversary of Mr. Morsi’s inauguration to call for his removal.
But he still has millions of ardent supporters and since his ouster tens of thousands have demonstrated in the streets to call for his reinstatement.
The military-led government has issued arrest warrants for hundreds of top Brotherhood leaders and jailed some of them. It has shut down the Brotherhood’s satellite television network and two other Islamist channels.

David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo, and Rick Gladstone from New York.