Egypt president-elect to head to Tahrir Square

[No Elephants]

Jun 29, 7:36 AM EDT

Egypt president-elect to head to Tahrir Square

CAIRO (AP) -- Egypt's president-elect plans Friday to address thousands who have camped out in Cairo's Tahrir Square to demonstrate against the military's hold on power despite the election of a new civilian leader, a nod to the protesters who supported his bid for leadership.

Mohammed Morsi of the Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, is the first president to be elected after the uprising that forced longtime leader Hosni Mubarak to step down. But he is already facing a serious challenge after the ruling generals who oversee the transition took a series of decisions that undermine the powers of his office before his swearing-in.

Morsi's spokesman, Yasser Ali, said the president-elect wants to stand with the thousands who have been in the square for over a week to express concern about the power grabs.

"He wants to confirm that people are the source of his power," Ali said. "He wants to show unity with his people over issues of the transition, which is now ending."

The ruling generals said they will transfer power to an elected president by July 1. But days before Morsi was declared winner, they gave themselves sweeping powers that undercut the authority of the president. The generals' constitutional declaration also designated them the country's legislature, following a court decision that dissolved the country's first freely elected parliament, which was dominated by Islamists.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_EGYPT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-06-29-07-36-25

Blessings upon people who insist upon self-determination. i hope they get it. And I hope it is good for and to them.

[Leopolds Ghost]

1. Better him than the Mubarak guy. Muslim Brotherhood seems poised to be a moderating influence

On the Islamist faction in the middle east.

They support social services, for one thing.

Too bad about their gender politics.........

If they speak out against Neo-Liberalism,

expect US politicians to declare MB part of
the Axis of Evil and give us a new enemy
instead of friend in the Middle East...

[No Elephants]

2. The issue was never Mubarak, who was a useful idiot and figurehead.

The issue has always been the power behind the figurehead, the military. The brass are trained at West Point and the Egyptian military has been getting a billion a year from the U.S. Who in an impoverished nation like Egypt wants to give up power AND a billion U.S. dollars a year?

That is why the military is attempting to disempower the new President, including purporting to deprive him of the power to declare war or alter the Constitution.

If the people of Egypt rebel against the military on this one the demonstrations will look very different from the films to which CNN and NBC treated us during the Arab Spring of 2011. Remember, the ones where people were peacefully standing around in the streets of Cairo, civilians and military, side by side, with men in street clothes sharing their water and cold beverages with men in uniform? I must have seen that same film fifteen times.

And all those interviews with our own military brass telling us the Egyptian military was going to treat the demonstrators just fine because "we" train them and maintain good relationships with them? We did not see any of those interviews later in the year, though, when the November elections the military promised never materialized.

BTW: Arabs hate us for our freedoms and not for what we have done in that part of the worled since oil was discovred there, maybe earlier. Keep saying that over and over.