Supporters and opponents of Egypt's president
on Sunday grew more
entrenched in their potentially destabilizing
battle over the Islamist
leader's move to assume near absolute powers,
with neither side appearing
willing to back down as the stock market
plunged amid the fresh turmoil.
The standoff poses one of the hardest tests for
the nation's liberal and
secular opposition since Hosni Mubarak's ouster
nearly two years ago.
Failure to sustain protests and eventually
force Mohammed Morsi to loosen
control could consign it to long-term
irrelevance.
Clashes between the two sides spilled onto the
streets for a third day
since the president issued edicts that make him
immune to oversight of any
kind, including that of the courts.
A teenager was killed and at least 60 people
were wounded when a group of
anti-Morsi protesters tried to storm the local
offices of the political arm
of the president's Muslim Brotherhood in the
Nile Delta city of Damanhoor,
according to security officials.
It was the first reported death from the street
battles that erupted across
much of the nation on Friday, the day after
Morsi's decrees were announced.
The officials, who spoke on condition of
anonymity because they were not
authorized to speak to the media, identified
the boy as 15-year-old Islam
Hamdi Abdel-Maqsood.
The tensions also dealt a fresh blow to the
economy, which has suffered due
to the problems plaguing the Arab world's most
populous nation since
Mubarak's ouster.
Egypt's benchmark EGX30 stock index dropped
9.59 percentage points Sunday
in the first trading session since Morsi issued
his decrees. The losses
were among the biggest since the turbulent days
and weeks immediately after
Mubarak's ouster in a popular uprising last
year. The loss in the value of
shares was estimated at close to $5 billion.
The judiciary, the main target of the edicts,
has pushed back, calling the
decrees a power grab and an "assault"
on the branch's independence. Judges
and prosecutors stayed away from many courts in
Cairo and other cities on
Sunday.
But the nation's highest judicial body, the
Supreme Judiciary Council,
watered down its opposition to the decrees on
Sunday. It told judges and
prosecutors to return to work and announced
that its members would meet
with Morsi on Monday to try to persuade him to
restrict immunity to major
state decisions like declaring war or martial
law or breaking diplomatic
relations with foreign nations.
Morsi supporters insist that the measures were
necessary to prevent the
courts, which already dissolved the elected
lower house of parliament, from
further holding up moves to stability by
disbanding the assembly writing
the new constitution, as judges were
considering doing. Both the parliament
and the constitutional assembly are dominated
by Islamists. Morsi accuses
Mubarak loyalists in the judiciary of seeking
to thwart the revolution's
goals and barred the judiciary from disbanding
the constitutional assembly
or parliament's upper house.
CBS Correspondent Holly Williams reports that
Morsi said the new powers
would only be temporary, and he'll relinquish
them next year when Egyptians
elect a new parliament and vote on a new
constitution. Many Egyptians
accept that.
Opposition activists, however, have been
adamant since the crisis first
erupted that they would not enter a dialogue with
Morsi's regime before the
decrees are rescinded.
"Now the constitution they are preparing,
it is for the Muslims only,"
George Ishaq, one of Morsi's political
opponents, told Williams. "It's not
fair ... So I say now, Morsi is not the
president for all Egyptians. He's
the president of the Muslim Brotherhood."
Protesters also clashed with police at Cairo's
Tahrir Square, the
birthplace of the mass protests that toppled
Mubarak, and in the side
streets and avenues leading off the plaza. The
Interior Ministry, which is
in charge of the police, said 267 protesters
have been arrested and 164
policemen injured since the unrest began a week
ago, initially to mark the
anniversary of street protests a year ago
against the nation's
then-military rulers. Forty-two protesters were
killed in those
demonstrations.
Isa 19:1 ¶The burden of Egypt. Behold, the LORD
rideth upon a swift cloud,
and shall come into Egypt: and the idols of
Egypt shall be moved at his
presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in
the midst of it.
Isa 19:2
And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they
shall fight every one against his brother, and
every one against his
neighbour; city against city, [and] kingdom
against kingdom.
Isa 19:3
And the spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst thereof; and I
will destroy the counsel thereof: and they
shall seek to the idols, and to
the charmers, and to them that have familiar
spirits, and to the wizards
2 Esdras 9:3 Therefore when there shall be seen
earthquakes and uproars of
the people in the world:
2 Esdras 6:24 At that time shall friends fight
one against another like
enemies, and the earth shall stand in fear with
those that dwell therein,
the springs of the fountains shall stand still,
and in three hours they
shall not run.
2 Esdras 13:31 And one shall undertake to fight
against another, one city
against another, one place against another, one
people against another, and
one realm against another.
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