Egypt Opposition In Muddle Over Call To Oust Morsi

Egypt’s main opposition alliance has got itself into a muddle by appearing to endorse a call for the overthrow of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, then backing away.

“The NSF will fully align to the demands of the Egyptian people calling to topple the regime of tyranny and domination of the Muslim Brotherhood,” a statement by the National Salvation Front issued late on Saturday said.

After a week of violence between protesters and the security forces in which 59 people have died, it called for Morsi, his interior minister and “all his partners in those crimes” to be investigated and put on trial for “killings, torture and illegal detentions.”

“The NSF supports all forms of peaceful protest to achieve these demands, and calls for the Egyptians to rally peacefully in all the streets of Egypt in defense of Egyptian dignity.”

The Front includes liberal politicians such as former U.N. nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei and former Arab League chief Amr Moussa, who last week signed a statement mediated by the country’s leading Muslim scholar renouncing violence and calling for a national dialogue.

However, the NSF’s spokesman, Khaled Daoud, said on Monday the coalition of liberal, social democratic and leftist parties was not demanding the removal of Egypt’s first democratically elected president just seven months after he took office.

“We are not calling for the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi right now. We believe he is elected but that doesn’t give him the right to change all the rules of the game,” Daoud told Reuters.

Ahmed Kamal, a spokesman for Moussa’s Congress Party, said the wording had been chosen carefully to warn against “any violent practices and new dictatorship” without questioning Morsi’s democratic legitimacy.

The NSF said it would not engage in dialogue until what it called the bloodbath had stopped, those responsible were tried, and the opposition’s previously stated demands were met.

Those demands include forming a national unity government, which Morsi has rejected before parliamentary elections due in April, and revising a controversial Islamist-leaning constitution adopted last December.

The statement was issued in reaction to an incident that sparked public outrage in which police were caught on video beating and dragging a man during a protest on Friday.

Another activist picked up by police in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square on January 25 and later taken unconscious to a hospital died of his wounds on Monday, prompting fresh accusations of police brutality by human rights groups.

Mohamed el-Gendi, 23, was a member of the Popular Current party. Doctors at Hilal hospital said Gendi was in a coma when he died and had suffered brain damage and multiple fractures.

This article appeared in print on page 2 of the February 5th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.