Egypt ’s President Mohamed Morsi swore in a new Cabinet yesterday that retained military chief Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi as Defence Minister while giving the Islamists and their allies several important portfolios.
The Cabinet, sworn in more than a month after the Islamist President Morsi took office, reflects the precarious balance of power between the President and the military, which retains broad powers after transferring control to him.
Finance Minister Mumtaz al-Said, who served in a military-appointed government, will keep his post, although Mr Morsi ’s Muslim Brotherhood had strongly opposed his budget.
The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party took at least five Cabinet seats, including education and the information ministry, which regulates the media.
Ahmed Mekki, a former appeals court deputy judge who sided with the Islamists when the Constitutional Court disbanded the Parliament they dominated in June, was appointed Justice Minister.
Prime Minister Hisham Qandil, a self-described devout Muslim whose appointment dismayed Mr Morsi’s secular election allies, said he chose the ministers based on their competence. “The main principle, the main criterion, was competence,” he told a news conference which he addressed yesterday.
“We should stop using such terms as them and us, and that this is a Christian, or a Copt, or a Muslim. All I see is Egyptian citizens,” he said. “We are the people’s government; we do not represent any trend.”
The little-known Mr Qandil was Irrigation Minister in the outgoing Cabinet before Mr Morsi appointed him last week.
A senior manager at the African Development Bank before heading Egypt ’s Nile Water Sector, he denies that he had belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood or any other party.
He said the Cabinet will comprise 35 ministers, including eight ministers of state, and will have to tackle the “enormous” economic and security challenges facing the country since Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow in February last year.
Seven ministers will remain from the outgoing military-appointed Cabinet, including Mr al-Said and Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr. Former prime minister Kamal Ganzouri will become a presidential adviser, state media said.
President Morsi, who campaigned on promises to revive Egypt’s economy and quickly restore deteriorating security, is eager to push through his programme with a technocratic government, his aides have said.
He must contend with the military, historically suspicious of the Islamists, and which controls the budget and legislative authority.