Defiant Morsi lectures his critics
CAIRO – With Egypt still in a state of shock and despair over political violence Wednesday night that left at least six dead and 700 injured, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi delivered a nationally televised speech late Thursday that was as defiant as it was conciliatory.
Morsi agreed to “have a dialogue” on Saturday with secular opponents who have demanded that he postpone or change the wording of a referendum on a new constitution that is to be voted on Dec. 15.
However, the president gave no indication that he would water down the draft constitution, which has Islamic references that the opposition wants purged, or to cancel or delay a vote on the proposal.
Nor would he repeal a presidential decree he issued on Nov. 22 that granted him what his opponents have called dictatorial powers.
Throughout his 35-minute speech, Morsi sternly criticized the secular opposition for ignoring the will of the electorate, which elected his Muslim Brotherhood movement earlier this year. Moreover, the president accused some of his rivals of being terrorists and said they had tried to seize power through violence and had taken “filthy money to destroy the country.”
Morsi began his address by stating that he had “a painful heart (filled) with sadness over the lives we have lost and the spilling of blood. … I call on all Egyptian people who wish stability to renounce violence and not allow anyone to exercise violence.”
A good measure of how the speech was received, and whether it will lead to more violence, will come after Friday prayers. It is at this time that both factions usually stage their biggest rallies.
However, preliminary indications after Morsi spoke were that the modest concessions he made would not be nearly enough to satisfy the newly united and increasingly emboldened secularists — a disparate group made up of leftists, liberals, Christians and some supporters of the military regimes that until last year had ruled Egypt for more than half a century.
“Leave! Leave! Leave!” shouted several thousand of Morsi’s opponents after the speech as they stood in the dark outside the presidential palace beside a cordon of barbed wire behind which tanks and armoured personnel carriers had been wheeled into position earlier in the day to stand guard.
It was at that spot and in nearby streets that supporters of the Brotherhood and secularists fought for hours overnight Wednesday as security forces mostly stood aside.
The carnage in Heliopolis, a usually serene upper-class district near the airport, was by far the worst to hit Egypt since disgraced former president Hosni Mubarak was toppled 21 months ago in one of the seminal events of the Arab Spring so far.
The fallout from the fighting continued Thursday with the resignation of the head of state television and another senior official.
This brought to eight the number of close advisers to Morsi who have quit in disgust in the past week over the bloodshed and differences with the president over his plan to make Islam a central part of Egyptian life.
Morsi was believed to be under tremendous pressure from Islamist hardliners to not grant any concessions and from Islamist moderates who wanted him to soften his stance.
Eyewitnesses who followed Wednesday’s clashes from balconies overlooking the palace said that the fracas had begun when grassroots supporters of the Brotherhood armed with stones, fire bombs and possibly guns launched what appeared to be a coordinated assault on secular demonstrators who had established a tent camp outside the palace. The secularists counterattacked with similar weapons.
“There was gunfire, shops were broken into, the Brotherhood and the revolutionaries both ruined everything,” said a Christian woman who gave her name as Maggie.
“People were banging on the entrance downstairs, trying to reach safety. It was total chaos. We now live hour by hour.”
Tensions at the presidential palace eased a bit shortly before dusk Thursday when members of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood dispersed, apparently on orders from senior leaders. But secular protesters held their ground and continued to demand the president’s resignation.
Army officers came out from time to time to urge the crowd to disperse and to offer bromides such as “we are all Egyptians, so what are we fighting?” or to buck up the young troopers manning the big guns who looked as if they wished to be almost anywhere else.
“If he doesn’t retreat and denounce what he has done, there will be more trouble because we are not going to stand for it,” vowed Emad Parsom, whose face was covered by a bandage which, he said, covered stitches that he had after being struck by a stone.
Explaining why he returned to where he had been hurt, Parsom said he felt he had to because “there must be no U-turn for our revolution. The Brotherhood has closed minds and do not wish to consider our opinions. They claim they have received something special from God and that we haven’t.”
Bassel Faoud, a management consultant with a doctorate in hotel management, reckoned that the violence had undermined Morsi.
“I am happy about it,” he said as he showed grainy video he had taken of the fighting on Wednesday night. “It provided the Brotherhood with a chance to show how much they love blood and that they do not care about the opinions of other Egyptians.
“We now understand better that freedom has a price.”