Mursi starts work to form unity govt

CAIRO: Egypt’s president-elect Muhammad Mursi pushed ahead yesterday with selecting a government, after a court delivered a blow to the ruling military by suspending its powers to arrest civilians.
Egypt’s first civilian president, and its first elected leader since an uprising ousted President Hosni Mubarak early last year, still has to contend with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.
The SCAF, which took control after Mubarak resigned in February 2011, will retain broad powers even after it formally transfers control to Mursi at the end of June.
The president-elect has met Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the head of SCAF and the man to whom Mubarak handed power.
Before appointing a prime minister for the post-Mubarak Egypt, media reports said, Mursi has been holding consultations with a cross-section of Egyptian society.
He met with a delegation from Al-Azhar, the highest religious authority in the country, as well as from the Coptic Christian church, whose members have voiced concern over the election of an Islamist president.
Newspapers said the president-elect had held talks with families of “martyrs” killed in last year’s uprising to discuss their demands for renewed trials of those responsible.
On the political front, the new president also has to contend with the fact that the country’s top court earlier this month ordered the Islamist-dominated parliament to be disbanded.
The military subsequently assumed legislative powers and also formed a powerful national security council that is headed by the president but dominated by generals.
The military also reserves the right to appoint a new constituent assembly should the one elected by Parliament be disbanded by a court decision expected on Sept. 1.
But the Muslim Brotherhood has insisted that only Parliament can appoint the assembly.
Mursi was the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, but he resigned from the movement in order to take the top job, pledging to represent all Egyptians.
“All these details are on the table for discussion,” said a senior aide to the president-elect on Tuesday, of the military’s powers. “Nothing has been settled yet, and no decision has been taken.”
Another aide said Mursi was holding talks to appoint an “independent national figure” as his premier. “Most of the Cabinet will be technocrats,” he added.
Egyptian media yesterday widely quoted a Mursi aide as saying that the president-elect was “working on reaching some compromises on various issues so that all the parties are able to work together.”
The official Al-Ahram newspaper reported on Tuesday that Mursi was considering Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei or former Finance Minister Hazem Beblawi for the post of prime minister.
Beblawi told AFP that he was abroad and had not yet been contacted. A court ruling on Tuesday pushed back the reach of the military in a ruling welcomed by human rights groups.
Egypt’s administrative court suspended a justice ministry decision that had empowered the military to arrest civilians, responding to an appeal by 17 rights groups against the controversial June 13 decree.
The head of military justice Adel Al-Mursi had said earlier this month that the decree was necessary after the state of emergency expired on May 31.
But the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights watchdog welcomed the court decision, saying the decree had given the military the right to arrest people for “resisting the rulers and insulting them.”
“The groups that filed the appeal believed that many of the crimes mentioned in the decree are included in the right of Egyptians to peacefully express political views opposing the regime,” it said in a statement.
The United States said that it was reviewing the court ruling.
“I think I will take some time to review what has happened,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington.“But if it is in support of human rights and dignity for the Egyptian people, then it would be a good move.”