Protesters gathered again in Cairo’s Tahrir Square yesterday to try to evict the generals who replaced former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, in a trial of strength that has muddied the run-up to Egypt’s first vote since a popular revolt deposed the former leader.
The parliamentary elections that begin today are the first step on the ruling military council’s timetable toward a transfer to civilian rule, now promised for July.
However, the demonstrators want the council to step aside now in favor of a civilian interim administration and reject its choice of 78-year-old former Egyptian prime minister Kamal Ganzouri to form the next Cabinet.
Other Egyptians yearn for stability after a week of bloodshed that has killed 42 people and wounded more than 2,000, preferring for now to let the generals run a nation whose political turmoil has thrust the economy deeper into crisis.
Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, head of the council, said the army would ensure security at the polling booths and reiterated that the vote would go ahead on schedule.
“We are at a crossroads. There are only two routes, the success of elections leading Egypt toward safety or facing dangerous hurdles that we in the armed forces, as part of the Egyptian people, will not allow,” he said in comments carried by the Web site of state-owned al-Ahram newspaper.
SOME SUPPORT
The generals have received tacit support from Islamists anxious that nothing disrupt two days of voting in the first of three rounds of an election in which they expect to do well.
Basam Sharaf, among protesters outside the Egyptian Parliament, said the objection to Ganzouri was not his age, but the policies he pursued as prime minister under Mubarak from 1996 to 1999.
“Two-thirds of the ministers that Ganzouri appointed in his day are now in Tora prison,” Sharaf said, referring to Mubarak-era officials accused of corruption and other offenses, who were put on trial after an uprising swept Mubarak from power in February.
Alarmed by Egypt’s latest bout of unrest, the US and the EU have condemned the “excessive force” used by the authorities and urged a swift handover to civilian rule.
Some protesters favor Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the UN nuclear watchdog, who has offered to drop his campaign for the presidency and to lead a government of national unity.
“We are trying to create a government that represents the revolution and the people’s demands,” protester Hiba Hani said. “We have no faith in Ganzouri or anyone brought in with him.”
ElBaradei is respected among pro-democracy campaigners and has a high international profile, but many Egyptians view him as out of touch because he spent much of his career abroad.
There was no sign that the generals would change course, although the latest unrest has already forced them accelerate plans to hand over to civilian rule.
LOOKING TO GAIN
Islamist parties banned under Mubarak have been campaigning hard to secure a strong foothold in mainstream politics.
Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie said what was important was the composition and powers of Ganzouri’s Cabinet, Egypt’s fourth this year.
“We have suffered from three cabinets that had no powers and the end-result was failure that has been suffered by the Egyptian people,” he said late on Saturday.
Badie suggested conspiratorial hands were at work in the unrest.
“There are powers from inside and outside Egypt that don’t want stability for Egypt or development and this is something that is being pushed and paid for,” he said.
Al-Gama’a al-Islamiya group, which has now renounced violence, but led an armed insurgency against Mubarak during Ganzouri’s government in the 1990s, said it would not join the protesters in Tahrir, criticizing them for trying to “force a certain prime minister on Egypt,” a reference to ElBaradei.
The Salafi Islamist Nour Party said it would meet Ganzouri in the next few days to propose names for his Cabinet.
The vote due to start today is billed as Egypt’s first free and fair election in decades, but a confusing array of candidates and parties and fears of bullying, bribery and violence at polling stations offer voters a daunting challenge.
The complex, drawn-out election to parliament’s lower house concludes in early January. Voting for the upper house and the presidency will follow before the end of June.
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