Opponents of President Mohamed Mursi clashed with Cairo police yesterday as thousands of protesters around the nation stepped up pressure on the Islamist leader to scrap a decree they say threatens Egypt with a new era of autocracy.
We don’t want a dictatorship again
Police fired tear gas at stone-throwing youths in streets off the capital’s Tahrir Square, heart of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak last year. Protesters also turned out in Alexandria, Suez, Minya and cities in the Nile Delta.
A 52-year-old protester died after inhaling tear gas in Cairo, the second death since last week’s decree expanding Mursi’s powers and barring legal challenges to his decisions.
Yesterday’s protest called by leftists, liberals and other groups deepened the worst crisis since the Muslim Brotherhood politician was elected in June, and exposed a divide between the newly empowered Islamists and their opponents.
Mursi’s administration has defended his decree as an effort to speed up reforms and complete a democratic transformation.
Opponents say it shows he has dictatorial instincts.
“The people want to bring down the regime,” protesters in Tahrir chanted, echoing slogans used in the anti-Mubarak revolt.
Mursi’s move provoked a rebellion by judges and battered confidence in an economy struggling after two years of turmoil.
Opponents have accused Mursi of behaving like a modern-day pharaoh, a jibe long levelled at Mubarak. The United States, a benefactor to Egypt’s military, has expressed concern about more turbulence in a country that has a peace treaty with Israel.
“We don’t want a dictatorship again. The Mubarak regime was a dictatorship. We had a revolution to have justice and freedom,” Ahmed Husseini, 32, said in Cairo.
Violence has flared around the country, including in a town north of Cairo where a Muslim Brotherhood youth was killed in clashes on Sunday. Hundreds have been injured.
Supporters and opponents of Mursi threw stones at each other and some hurled petrol bombs in the Delta city of el-Mahalla el-Kubra. A doctor said nine people were brought to hospital, but he expected numbers to rise to dozens.
The protest was a show of strength by the non-Islamist opposition, whose fractious ranks have been brought together by the crisis.
Well-organised Islamists have consistently beaten more secular-minded parties in elections held since Mubarak was ousted in February 2011.
“The main demand is to withdraw the constitutional declaration (decree). This is the point,” said Amr Moussa, ex-Arab League chief and presidential candidate who has joined the opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front.