Egypt bursting with change
CAIRO — Egypt’s interim leader on Tuesday swore in the first Cabinet since the military ousted the Islamist president, giving members of the country’s liberal movements key positions and naming three Christians and three women, their highest numbers in an Egyptian government.
The new government is led by Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi, an economist. Army chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who ousted Mohammed Morsi on July 3, retains his post as defense minister and also took the position of first deputy prime minister, an additional title given to defense ministers in the past.
The Cabinet of more than 30 ministers does not include any members of Islamist parties. The interim president’s spokesman had earlier said posts would be offered to Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, but the group promptly refused.
The Brotherhood has said it will not participate in the military-backed political process and vows to continue protests until Morsi, the country’s first freely elected president, is reinstated. The swearing-in of the Cabinet took place hours after overnight clashes between police and Islamist supporters of Morsi left seven protesters dead in the worst outbreak of violence in a week.
The new government, sworn in by interim President Adly Mansour, reflects the largely liberal, secular bent of the factions who backed el-Sissi’s removal of Morsi.
Women have a somewhat higher profile, with three ministries — including the powerful Information and Health ministries. Most past governments for decades have had no more than two women in them.
The Cabinet also includes three Christians, including one of the three women, Environment Minister Laila Rashed Iskander.
The Morsi-appointed interior minister, Mohammed Ibrahim, remains in his post, in charge of the police. Nabil Fahmy, who was Egypt’s ambassador to the U.S. from 1999-2008, becomes foreign minister.
In a nod to the revolutionary youth groups that engineered the 2011 uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak and the sparked the protests that preceded Morsi’s ouster, Mansour renamed the justice portfolio the “transitional justice and national reconciliation ministry” and gave it to Mohammed el-Mahdi, a career judge.
The groups have been asked that individuals responsible for the killings of hundreds of protesters since Mubarak’s fall be brought to justice. Reconciliation is a long-standing demand by most political forces to end the nation’s polarization, which often spills over into street violence.
At least three senior figures from the National Salvation Front, the main opposition grouping during Morsi’s year in office, were included in the government. In addition, the new deputy prime minister in charge of international cooperation, Ziad Bahaa-Eldin, is a member of the Social Democratic Party, which is part of the Salvation Front.
Mohamed ElBaradei, one of the Front’s top leaders, already has been installed as Mansour’s vice president.
In a first, Mansour also swore in an Egyptian soccer star as sports minister. Taher Abu Zeid was a member of a star-studded national squad that won the 1986 African Nations’ Cup in Cairo.
The Cabinet has 33 members, not including el-Beblawi.
Soon after the swearing in, carried live on state TV, the one Islamist party that supported the military’s ouster of Morsi, criticized the new Cabinet for its lack of inclusion.
“This is a repeat of the same mistake the last government was blamed for, and leads to a totally biased government,” the Al-Nour Party said in a statement. It said it doesn’t accept “that one movement replaces another to control the government, which should be unbiased and nonpartisan.”
The Cabinet is to run the country as it goes through a transition plan announced last week by Mansour, which includes the formation of panels to amend the Islamist-drafted constitution that was passed under Morsi and then the holding of elections for a new parliament and president early next year.
The new leadership is driving ahead with the process despite the staunch rejection by Morsi’s Islamist supporters, who are holding sit-ins in cities around the country. Morsi’s supporters accuse the military of carrying out a coup that has destroyed Egypt’s democracy.
Riots broke out overnight, killing at least seven and injuring 261 in four locations in Cairo, said Khaled el-Khateeb, the head of the Health Ministry’s emergency and intensive-care department. Egypt’s state news agency said 401 people were arrested in the clashes. Information for this article was contributed by Sarah El Deeb and Deb Riechmann of The Associated Press.