Egypt: Rebellion Movement Pressures President, PM to Pare Claimed Powers

As Egypt braced for dueling huge demonstrations on Friday, a spokesman for the Rebellion or Tamarrud Movement, Hasan Shahin, said Thursday that the campaign expects the appointed interim president, Adly Mansour, to issue a new set of constitutional guidelines on the transitional government. Those declared a couple of days ago, they said, give too much power to the president.

Shahin said that the head of the al-Dustur (Constitution) Party, Muhammad Elbaradei, would put forward the suggestions of Rebellion to the interim president. They said that the constitutional declaration would in any case lapse as soon as a new constitution is drafted. Elbaradei, advisor to Mansour on foreign affairs, and Hazem Biblawi, the interim prime minister, will head up a commission charged with suggesting amendments to the 2012 constitution.

Shahin said that the real struggle is over the constitution, since the only forces guaranteeing the values of the revolution are the revolutionary street and a constitution that guarantees the rights of the poor and a life of dignity and an independent country.

He warned that rumors had reached Rebellion that the Muslim Brotherhood was mounting a conspiracy aimed at provoking more massacres on Friday, in order to create solidarity among the youth of the Brotherhood and to convince the public that the Brotherhood is being unfairly attacked during the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

Rebellion is calling for the masses to gather in and around Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo to break the fast at sunset and then to pray supereregatory prayers together that night in Tahrir and to raise the flag of Egypt in order to complete the revolution and to protect it from the Muslim Brotherhood and the United States and Israel . . .

The same call was put out in Port Said for people to continue to occupy the city’s central square and to come out to support the overthrow of Muslim Brotherhood leader and former Egyptian president Muhammad Morsi. The leader of the Egypt Party in the city complained that the Brotherhood regime had had a plan to isolate the Suez Canal port from the rest of the country. He also denounced an attack on a church in Port Said, saying that since its founding in the 19th century the city had been characterized by religious tolerance.