Thursday, June 28, 2012

Muslim Brotherhood Rises Under a Military Thumb



By Adam Morrow

"CAIRO, Jun 28 2012 (IPS) - The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi faces a host of daunting political hurdles after being officially declared Egypt’s first freely-elected president on Sunday.

“Due to ongoing political jockeying between the Brotherhood and the ruling military council, it remains uncertain until now what state institution Morsi will swear the oath of office in front of,” Abdel Ghaffar Shukr, founder of the Socialist Popular Alliance Party told IPS.....

Within recent days, the Brotherhood has issued conflicting statements [so, what is new??] as to which state institution Morsi would, in fact, take the oath of office before. Some have said he would do so before the dissolved parliament; others that he would do so before the HCC; and others still that he would be sworn in at a ceremony in Tahrir Square.

According to the SCAF’s official electoral timetable, Egypt’s new president is supposed to take the oath of office on Saturday (Jun. 30).

Morsi is currently in talks with the SCAF in hopes of reaching agreement to amend the constitutional addendum and reinstate the dissolved People’s Assembly, so that he might be sworn in before parliament.

His prospects, however, appear bleak. On Tuesday (Jun. 26), SCAF member Mamdouh Shahin told journalists that Morsi would “comply with the law and take the oath of office before the HCC.”

The situation, meanwhile, has also brought the Brotherhood and its president-elect under pressure from their secular-revolutionary allies.

On Tuesday, the April 6 youth movement – which played a prominent role in last year’s uprising and which threw its weight behind Morsi in the recent runoff – warned that taking the oath of office before the HCC was “tantamount to recognising this ‘constitutional addendum’ that leaves Egypt under the de facto control of the military.”

On Wednesday (Jun. 27), Morsi’s presidential office stated that it would definitively announce the location of the oath-taking ceremony the following day. Before dawn on Thursday, however, the state press cited an official source as saying: “If Morsi isn’t sworn in before the HCC on Saturday…the SCAF reserves the right to declare the office of president void.”

“Morsi may have won the election,” said Shukr, “but the ongoing struggle between the SCAF and the Brotherhood for control of the country is far from over.”"

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