Protesters across Egypt call for Mohamed Morsi to go

Hundreds of thousands of people across Egypt have filled the streets to call for the departure of Mohamed Morsi, hours after the president told the Guardian he would not resign.

On the first anniversary of his inauguration as the country’s first democratically elected president, up to 200,000 protesters flocked to Tahrir Square in Cairo on Sunday to demand his removal, before heading to the presidential palace to continue the demonstrations.

In Alexandria, Egypt’s second city, 100,000 rallied, with similar protests reported in dozens of other cities. The scale of the demonstrations, on the first day of the working week, surpassed predictions made by presidential aides, who had expected a total of only 150,000 to take part. Several senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group from which Morsi hails, spent the day fleeing the unrest amid safety fears.

“Egyptians are doing it again,” said Ahmed Said, a leader of the largest opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front (NSF). “They insist on regaining their hijacked revolution. We have revolted to reclaim our dignity, and reclaim our dignity we will.”

But Morsi remained defiant: “If we changed someone in office who [was elected] according to constitutional legitimacy – well, there will be people opposing the new president too, and a week or a month later they will ask him to step down,” he said.

While Morsi was elected in free elections, his opponents believe he has failed to uphold the wider democratic values on which a well-rounded democracy depends. In particular, he has been criticised for using a presidential decree to force through an Islamist-slanted constitution, viewed by many as the act of a dictator. Among many other complaints, Morsi has been accused of presiding over the oppression of activists and journalists, and a marked drop in living standards.

A former consensus candidate for Islamist and secular voters, critics say Morsi has alienated secular politicians and failed to achieve the unity he was elected to build. The president blames the opposition for failing to compromise.

“Morsi got elected in a democratic way,” says one critic, businessman Hassan Shanab, in a wheelchair outside the presidential palace. “But since he took over, everything’s been polarised. All of a sudden we see ourselves part of an Islamic regime like Iran. Morsi’s answerable to the Brotherhood, but they are not answerable to us.” Nearby, a crowd pelted stones a giant poster of the president.

Morsi still has a vocal support base, 20,000 of whom have been camped in east Cairo since Friday in a show of support for his regime and its democratic legitimacy. Many here saw the protests elsewhere as counter-revolutionary, with some claiming they had been started by forces loyal to Hosni Mubarak, the former dictator.

“I’m here to defend my vote, and to defend a revolution I was part of,” said Shaima Abdel-Hamid, a teacher and Morsi supporter. “We chose a president and now they want to get rid of him when he’s dealing with 30 years of corruption. And they want to get rid of him after only a year.”

Anti-regime demonstrators created a carnival atmosphere in Tahrir Square, with many setting off fireworks. But at the Islamist rally, the mood was tetchy, after the attack of several Brotherhood offices last week. Many donned bicycle helmets and builders’ hard hats and held shields and sticks in case of attack.

For the time being, they are in defensive mode, sitting behind six lines of security checks. But with senior Muslim clerics warning of the prospect of civil war this week, many of the Islamists promised to defend the presidential palace, should the police or the army fail to protect it during protests. The police has historically been no friend of the Brotherhood, and across Egypt on Sunday there were isolated accounts of officers expressing support for anti-Morsi protesters.

Speculation has been rife about what will happen next. There is widespread support for a military coup, particularly after the head of the armed forces, General Abdel Fattah Sisi, hinted at the possibility of intervention last week. “Come on, Sisi,” protesters chanted outside the palace, “my president is not Morsi.”

But others feel uncomfortable with such sentiment. The Tamarrod campaign, a new protest movement that spearheaded the latest protests, rejected support for Ahmed Shafiq, the former air force chief whom Morsi defeated last year.

But such arguments may be unnecessary. Allies of the president believe that if he can hang on until the start of Ramadan, in just over a week, protests will dissipate.

Additional reporting by Mowaffaq Safadi

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/30/mohamed-morsi-egypt-protests