Egypt’s Morsi backs down after ultimatum from army
But Awa said an equally contentious referendum on a new constitution would go ahead as planned on December 15. The president was legally bound under the constitution to maintain that date and had no choice, he said.
Awa added that if the draft constitution were rejected, a new one would be drawn up by officials elected by the people, rather than ones chosen by parliament as for the current text.
The draft constitution has been criticised for its potential to weaken human rights and the rights of women, and out of fear it would usher in Islamic interpretation of laws.
The two issues — the decree and the referendum — were at the heart of the anti- Morsi protests that turned violent last week, with clashes on Wednesday that killed seven people and wounded hundreds.
The opposition refused Morsi’s offer of dialogue as long as those two decisions stood.
But on Saturday the powerful military, in its first statement since the crisis began, told both sides to talk. Otherwise, it warned, Egypt would descend “into a dark tunnel with disastrous results — and that is something we will not allow.”
The army “stands always with the great Egyptian people and insists on its unity” but it was its duty to protect state institutions. It urged a solution based on “democratic rules.”
Morsi’s concession on the decree appeared to be a gesture to open the way for the talks to happen. But it remained to be seen if the opposition would remain intransigent over the referendum.
One of the groups involved in the struggle to topple Mubarak, the April 6 Youth Movement, swiftly dismissed the announcements as “a political manoeuvre aimed at duping the people”.
It called for the protests to continue to stop “the referendum on the constitution of the Muslim Brotherhood”, a reference to the party backing Morsi. CAIRO — Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi backed down in a political crisis marked by weeks of street protests, after the powerful army gave an ultimatum to him and the opposition to hold talks. were would But that not the his initial satisfy concession signs an increasingly opposition. fierce
The Islamist leader annulled a controversial decree issued last month that put his decisions beyond judicial review — a move denounced as a dictatorial “power grab” by the opposition, but one which Morsi had defended as necessary to protect reforms. “The constitutional decree is annulled from this moment,” Selim al-Awa, an Islamist politician and adviser to Morsi, told a news conference after a meeting between the president and other political leaders.