Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi has retired two top military
officers amid power struggle between the
county’s leadership and the army.
The retirement of Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Egypt’s
defense minister, was part of a reshuffle of the top tier of the armed forces,
and effectively sidelined the man who had headed the military council that
ruled after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.
Lieutenant General Sami Enan was also
ordered from office. Both men were named as advisers to Mursi.
The decision is an “incredible
move, a very gutsy move,” Shadi Hamid, director of research at Brookings Doha
Center, said by telephone yesterday. “The best way to understand this is as
another chapter in the long struggle between Mursi and the Brotherhood and the
deep state.”
In addition to the shake-up, Mursi
canceled constitutional changes issued by the military before his inauguration
that had stripped his office of some of its authority.
Mursi said during a religious
ceremony that aired yesterday on Al Jazeera television that his decisions
weren’t meant to “marginalize anybody,” rather they were intended to open “new
horizons to new bloods and new wills.”
It wasn’t clear whether the military
acquiesced in the changes. Reuters quoted General Mohamed el-Assar, a member of
the military council, as saying the decision was made after consultation with
Tantawi, who had served as Mubarak’s long-time defense chief, and other
military leaders.
Civilian
Transition
“My gut is telling me that this is
accepted, which would be hugely positive for Egypt as it would mark transition
to proper civilian rule,” Emad Mostaque, a U.K-based analyst at Religare Noah,
wrote in an e-mailed note yesterday.
Mursi appointed judge Mahmoud
Mekki as vice president, in addition to removing the top defense aides, Mursi’s
spokesman, Yasser Ali, said in a televised address announcing the changes. The
Associated Press reported that Mekki had publicly spoken against election fraud
during Mubarak’s regime.
Crowds gathered in Alexandria and
in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, where the uprising that toppled Mubarak began, to
support the move, according to Al Jazeera.
Mursi, who was nominated by the
Muslim Brotherhood for the country’s top office, has been locked in a power
struggle with the generals who handed over authority to him at the end of June.
Military
Decision
Their decision to issue the
constitutional change hours after polls closed in the final stage of the
presidential election was described as being tantamount to a coup by the
Brotherhood and the youth groups that played a key role in the January 2011
uprising against Mubarak.
Tantawi had also ordered the dissolution
of the Islamist- dominated parliament, implementing a ruling by the country’s
highest court that had critics claiming the military was trying to subvert
Egypt’s transition to democracy. Under the decree, the military gave themselves
temporary legislative rights.
Along with canceling the June 17
constitutional declaration, Mursi issued a new constitutional addendum of his
own giving himself the power to appoint a panel to draft the new constitution
if the current 100-member committee fails to fulfill its task, the state-run
Middle East News Agency reported, citing Ali. The military had given itself the
same right under the decree which he nullified.
“This isn’t game over, this isn’t
Mursi won,” Hamid, with Brookings Doha Center, said. “Maybe Mursi is winning
this particular period of the struggle, but we’ve learned from Egypt that the
situation seems fluid. One day, the military seems on top and other days Mursi
seems on top.”
Mursi previously forced the acting
head of the country’s general intelligence service into retirement and fired
other top officials after an attack by unidentified militants in Sinai that
left 16 soldiers dead.
As part of the shake-up, Mursi
promoted General Abdelfatah al-Seesi defense minister and Sedki Sobhi to armed
forces chief of staff, elevating him to the rank of general, Ali said.
/Bloomberg
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