Egypt’s Morsi stands by his immunity decrees

U.S., other nations voice concerns over move

The body of Gaber Salah, who died Sunday from injuries he suffered during clashes with security forces last week, is carried by fellow Egyptians on Monday in Cairo.
The body of Gaber Salah, who died Sunday from injuries he suffered during clashes with security forces last week, is carried by fellow Egyptians on Monday in Cairo.

— Egypt’s president told the country’s top judges Monday that he did not infringe on their authority when he seized near absolute power, setting up a prolonged showdown on the eve of a mass protest planned by opponents of the Islamist leader.

An aide to President Mohammed Morsi said the decree was limited to “sovereignty-related issues,” but that did not satisfy his critics.

The uncompromising stance came during a meeting between Morsi and members of the Supreme Judiciary Council in a bid to resolve a four-day crisis that has plunged the country into a new round of turmoil with clashes between the two sides that left one protester dead and hundreds wounded.

The judiciary, the main target of Morsi’s edicts, also has pushed back, calling the decrees a power grab and an “assault” on the branch’s independence. Judges and prosecutors stayed away from many courts in Cairo and other cities Sunday and Monday.

A spokesman said Morsi told the judges that he acted within his right as the nation’s sole source of legislation when he issued decrees putting himself above judicial oversight. The president also extended the same immunity to two bodies dominated by his Islamist allies - a panel drafting a new constitution and parliament’s mostly toothless upper chamber. The statement did not touch on the protection from oversight Morsi has extended to those two bodies.

The spokesman, Yasser Ali, said Morsi assured the judges that the decrees did not in any way “infringe” on the judiciary and that they were “temporary” and limited only to “sovereignty-related issues.”

A vaguely worded presidential statement did not define those issues, but they were widely interpreted to cover declaration of war, imposition of martial law, breaking diplomatic relations with a foreign nation or dismissing a Cabinet.

The lower Shura Council does not have lawmaking authorities but, in the absence of the more powerful lower chamber, the People’s Assembly, it is the only popularly elected body where the Brotherhood and other Islamists have a majority. The People’s Assembly was dissolved by a court ruling in June.

Two prominent rights lawyers - Gamal Eid and Ahmed Ragheb - dismissed Ali’s remarks.

Eid said they were designed to keep “Morsi above the law,” while Ragheb said they amounted to “playing with words.”

“This is not what Egyptians are objecting to and protesting about. If the president wanted to resolve the crisis, there should be an amendment to his constitutional declaration.”

Ali’s comments signaled Morsi’s resolve not to back down or compromise on the constitutional amendments he announced last week, raising the likelihood of more violence. Both sides had planned competing rallies in Cairo today, but the Brotherhood canceled its rally late Monday, saying it wanted to reduce tension and congestion in the city.

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke Monday by telephone with Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr to “register American concerns about Egypt’s political situation,” according to spokesman Victoria Nuland.

Clinton, she said, stressed that the U.S. wanted to “see the constitutional process move forward in a way that does not overly concentrate power in one set of hands, that ensures that rule of law, checks and balances, protection of the rights of all groups in Egypt are upheld,” Nuland said.

Opposition activists have denounced Morsi’s decrees as a blatant power grab, and refused to enter a dialogue with the presidency before the edicts are rescinded. The president has vigorously defended the new powers, saying they are a necessary temporary measure to implement badly needed changes and protect Egypt’s transition to democracy after last year’s ouster of his predecessor Hosni Mubarak.

Morsi said he wants to retain the new powers until the new constitution is adopted in a nationwide referendum and parliamentary elections are held, a time line that stretches to the middle of next year.

Many members of the judiciary were appointed under Mubarak, drawing allegations, even by some of Morsi’s critics, that they are trying to perpetuate the regime’s corrupt practices. But opponents are angry that the decrees leave Morsi without any check on his power.

Morsi, who became Egypt’s first freely elected president in June, was quoted by Ali as telling his prime minister and security chiefs earlier Monday that his decrees were designed to “end the transitional period as soon as possible.”

Justice Minister Ahmed Mekki actively tried to broker a deal with top jurists to resolve the crisis, and at least three other senior advisers resigned over the measure.

“In his head, the president thought that this would push us forward, but then it was met with all this inflammation,” Mekki said.

He faulted the president for failing to consult with his opponents before issuing it, but he also faulted the opponents for their own unwillingness to come to the table: “I blame all of Egypt, because they do not know how to talk to each other.”

Mekki said Saturday night that he trusted the sincerity of the president’s intention to quickly end Egypt’s tortured political transition, bring back a Parliament and turn over to it much of the vast power he currently holds. But Mekki said the text of Morsi’s decree was much too sweeping, and that he could never have signed it himself because it “violates my core convictions.”

“I believe it is the duty of the president” to limit the decree’s scope, Mekki said.

The dispute is the latest crisis to roil the Arab world’s most populous nation, which has faced mass protests, rising crime and economic woes since the initial euphoria after the popular uprising that ousted Mubarak after nearly 30 years of autocratic rule.

Morsi’s decrees were motivated in part by a court ruling in June that dissolved the parliament’s more powerful lower chamber known as the People’s Assembly, which was dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and ultraconservative Islamists.

The verdict meant legislative authority first fell in the hands of the then-ruling military, but Morsi grabbed it in August after he ordered the retirement of the army’s two top generals.

Morsi’s decrees, which were announced Thursday,saved the constitutional panel and the upper chamber from a fate similar to that of the People’s Assembly because several courts looking into the legal basis of their creation were scheduled to issue verdicts to disband them.

Ayman al-Sayyad, a member of Morsi’s 17-member advisory council, said the presidential aides asked the president in meetings over the weekend to negotiate a way out of the crisis and enter dialogue with all political forces to iron out differences over the nation’s new constitution.

Secular and Christian politicians have withdrawn from the 100-seat panel tasked with drafting the charter to protest what they call the hijacking of the process by Morsi’s Islamist allies. They fear the Islamists would produce a draft that infringes on the rights of liberals, women and the minority Christians.

The president, al-Sayyad added, would shortly take decisions that would spare the nation a “possible sea of blood.” He did not elaborate.

The dispute over the decrees, the latest in the country’s bumpy transition to democracy, has taken a toll on the nation’s already ailing economy. Egypt’s benchmark stock index dropped more than 9.5 percentage points on Sunday, the first day of trading since Morsi’s announcement. It fell again Monday during early trading but recovered to close up by2.6 percentage points.

It has also played out in urban street protests across the country, including in the capital, Cairo, and the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria.

Thousands gathered in Damanhoor for the funeral procession of 15-year-old Islam Abdel-Maksoud, who was killed Sunday when a group of anti-Morsi protesters tried to storm the local offices of the political arm of the president’s fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s most powerful political group.

The Health Ministry said Monday that 444 people have been wounded nationwide, including 49 who remain hospitalized, since the clashes broke out Friday, according to a statement carried by the official news agency MENA.

Morsi’s office said in a statement that he had ordered the country’s top prosecutor to investigate the teenager’s death, along with that of another young man shot in Cairo last week during demonstrations to mark the anniversary of deadly protests last year that called for an end to the then-ruling military.

Up to 10,000 people marched through Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the birthplace of the uprising against Mubarak, for the funeral procession of 16-year-old Gaber Salah, who succumbed to his head wounds Sunday. Salah was wounded in clashes with police in the capital during protests against the Brotherhood earlier last week, before the decrees were issued.

Salah was a member of April 6, one of the key right groups behind the anti-Mubarak uprising. He was also a founder of a Facebook group called “Against the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Also on Monday, Human Rights Watch said that Morsi’s decrees undermined the rule of law in Egypt and appeared to give him the power to issue emergency-style measures at any time for vague reasons.In Berlin, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in thinly veiled criticism that the separation of powers was a fundamental principle of any democratic constitution.

Morsi, added spokesman Steffen Seibert, has a “great responsibility” to lead Egypt to a “democratically ordered political system” that rests on that principle.

Information for this article was contributed by Hamza Hendawi, Maggie Michael, Robert H. Reid and Bradley Klapper of The Associated Press and by David D. Kirkpatrick of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/27/2012

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