Egypt roiled in protest, tension
Thousands demand that Morsi resign
CAIRO — Hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters armed with flags, banners and deafening waves of chants for President Mohammed Morsi’s downfall packed into Cairo’s Tahrir Square and flooded the streets around Egypt’s presidential palace Sunday, in the largest showing of opposition to the Islamist leader since he took office one year ago Sunday.
Thousands of Morsi supporters, many of them from his Muslim Brotherhood party, filled another Cairo thoroughfare with their own chants of support. Some brandished wooden clubs, canes and metal pipes, ready to defend themselves in the event that clashes erupted between the two camps, a scenario that many Egyptians feared was inevitable.
As night fell, violent clashes broke out between Morsi’s opponents and supporters in several cities across the country, resulting in four deaths. Attackers also stormed the Muslim Brotherhood’s Cairo headquarters, hurling Molotov cocktails and setting it on fire. Witnesses said they were met with birdshot fire from the building’s windows.
But the rival protests remained largely peaceful,
despite minor skirmishes in the capital and across the country, bolstering confidence among those seeking to oust the president, and underscoring the lingering question of how the nation of 85 million can reconcile its devastating political divide more than two years after the fall of Hosni Mubarak.
Morsi is Egypt’s first democratically elected president. But opposition protesters — who comprise a loose alliance of liberal and secular activists, old regime loyalists and a growing number of the nation’s disenchanted poor — say Morsi has lost his legitimacy during a year of political turmoil as the country’s economy has faltered and security in the streets has crumbled.
Opposition leaders say they want Morsi to resign, the Islamist- dominated elected upper house of parliament dissolved and the Islamist-drafted constitution shelved in favor of a new round of elections and a new constitution.
The president’s supporters, most of them from the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups, accuse the opposition of challenging the democratic process and engaging in a conspiracy to oust an elected ruler.
But as each side sought to claim the nation’s majority, and thus the legitimacy, on Sunday, it was also apparent that the president’s supporters were vastly outnumbered. And that, political analysts said, left a resolution to Egypt’s crisis hanging in uncertainty.
“There is a good scenario, and there is a bad scenario,” said Yasser ElShimy, an Egypt analyst for the International Crisis Group.
“I think the good scenario is for the president to get the hint that his approach has failed to build a consensus so far and it needs a serious readjustment.”
Ideally, the opposition would accept some sort of compromise then, and recognize Morsi’s legitimacy, he said.
But the bad scenario was more likely, El-Shimy said — a scenario where “this large turnout drives the opposition to adopt maximal demands.”
Analysts say Morsi is unlikely to cede power. And the Muslim Brotherhood says such a thing is out of the question. “We are not making light of the protests or demands,” said presidential spokesman Omar Amer in a late-night news conference.
Sporadic violence erupted Sunday, but the larger protests remained calm. Three people were killed in clashes between Morsi supporters and opponents in the southern city of Assiut, and one person was killed in Beni Suef, also in the south, according to Saad Zaghloul, an assistant to the minister of health.
In some areas of Cairo on Sunday, uniformed officers joined the protesters.
“I reject Morsi. I want him to leave,” said Hussein Ahmed Ibrahim, a police major.