MAJESHI YA MTOA RAIS WA MISRI BW. MOHAMED MORSI

The first democratically elected leader of Egypt is removed after he 'failed to meet the demands of the Egyptian people,' general says.

Egyptians wave national flags as fireworks light the sky at Tahrir Square after President Mohamed Morsi was ousted by the military. (Amr Nabil, Associated Press / July 3, 2013)

 

By Jeffrey Fleishman and Ingy Hassieb

CAIRO — The army pushed Egypt's first democratically elected president from power after days of massive street protests, acting swiftly to remove the Islamist leader in favor of a coalition government and calling for new elections to bring stability to this deeply polarized nation.
President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood party, in power just a year, remained defiant, insisting that they continued to be Egypt's legitimate authority. Some of Morsi's supporters threatened violent retaliation, but the Islamists appeared to be overwhelmed by tanks in the boulevards and hundreds of thousands of protesters streaming through villages and cities.
Anti-Morsi protesters, honking horns, flying flags and flashing green lasers into the sky over the Nile, crammed Tahrir Square in Cairo during hours of closed-door meetings and amid reports of troop movements. People across the capital silenced one another to listen to televised news bulletins. At the mosque where Islamists camped, men wept.
Fireworks exploded over the city when Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisi, commander of the armed forces, went on television late Wednesday to declare that Judge Adly Mahmoud Mansour, head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, would replace Morsi. The court was one of Morsi's most potent enemies. The military, acting hours after the expiration of a 48-hour deadline it had given Morsi to restore stability, also scrapped the new Islamist-drafted constitution.
Sisi said Morsi "failed to meet the demands of the Egyptian people."
He said religious and civilian leaders "have agreed on a road map for the future that includes initial steps to achieve the building of a strong Egyptian society that is cohesive and does not exclude anyone, and ends the state of tension and division."
In a matter of minutes, Sisi's terse words brought about the demise of the Brotherhood's effort to govern Egypt after decades as a potent but outlawed movement. It was the second time in two years that the army intervened in the country's turbulent politics, highlighting concern that Egypt's success at building a democracy would be determined more by the power of the street than by the ballot box. Read More: Here >>>