Morsi defies military decree
CAIRO — Egypt’s Islamist president fired the first volley in his war with the powerful generals on Sunday, calling on the Islamist-dominated parliament to reconvene in defiance of a military decree dissolving the legislature on the basis of a ruling by the country’s highest court.
A week into his presidency, Mohammed Morsi’s decree could plunge the country into a new bout of instability, and possible violence, nearly 17 months after the ouster of authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak by a popular uprising and the start of a transition period defined more by turmoil than the freedom that followed some 30 years of authoritarian rule.
His decree also called for new parliamentary elections to be held within 60 days of the adoption of a new constitution for the country, which is not expected before late this year.
In the first sign of an imminent crisis, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the formal name of the body grouping the nation’s top generals, held an “emergency meeting” shortly after Morsi’s decree was announced by the official news agency.
The generals, said the agency, met to “review and discuss the consequences” of Morsi’s decision. In a separate report, the supreme constitutional court, the tribunal that dissolved the legislature last month, will meet on Monday to discuss Morsi’s decision.
The court ruling said a third of the legislature’s members were illegally elected, but only ordered its dissolution in the verdict’s legal citation. Acting on the court’s ruling, the generals decreed the dissolution of parliament last month, angering the Brotherhood and poisoning the atmosphere ahead of the military’s handover of power to Morsi on June 30.
The basis of the ruling is that political parties breached the principle of equality by fielding candidates to run for the third of the chamber’s seats set aside for independents.
The text of Morsi’s decree made no mention of the supreme constitutional court’s ruling, saying it was revoking the military’s own decree to disband the legislature. The military decree came when the generals were in power, acting as a collective presidency.
Morsi is a conservative Islamist and a longtime member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s most powerful political group. The fundamentalist group won nearly half of parliament’s seats when elections were held some seven months ago.
The dissolution of parliament came as a severe blow to the Brotherhood, which has dreamt of political power for most of the 84 years since its inception. Its imminent clash with the military evokes memories of the 1950s and 1960s when the government at the time jailed the group’s leaders along with hundreds of its supporters.