CAIRO — Struggling to subdue continuing street protests, the government of President Mohamed Morsi has approved legislation reimposing martial law by calling on the armed forces to keep order and authorizing soldiers to arrest civilians, Egypt’s state media reported Saturday.
Mr. Morsi has not yet issued the order, the flagship state newspaper Al Ahram reported. But even if merely a threat, the preparation of the measure suggested a sharp escalation in the political battle between Egypt’s new Islamist leaders and their secular opponents over an Islamist-backed draft constitution. The standoff has already threatened to derail the culmination of Egypt’s promised transition to a constitutional democracy nearly two years after the revolt against the former leader Hosni Mubarak.
In a statement read on state television, a military spokesman warned Saturday of "disastrous consequences" if the crisis gripping Egypt was not resolved and he urged new dialogue as "the best and only way" to overcome the standoff.
The military also pledged to protect state institutions, according to media reports..
A need to rely on the military to secure a referendum scheduled for next Saturday to approve the new charter could undermine Mr. Morsi’s efforts to present the documents as an expression of national consensus that might resolve the crisis.
Even the possibility presents an extraordinary role reversal: an elected president who spent decades opposing Mr. Mubarak’s use of martial law to detain Islamists for challenging his power — a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who himself spent months in jail under Mr. Mubarak’s “emergency law” — is poised to resort to similar tactics to control unrest and violence from secular groups. After six decades during which military-backed secular autocrats used the threat of an Islamist takeover to justify their authoritarian rule, the order would bring the military into the streets to protect an elected Islamist, dashing the whispered hopes of some more secular Egyptians that the military might step in to remove Mr. Morsi from power.
The move would also reflect an equally extraordinary breakdown in Egyptian civic life that in the last two weeks has destroyed most of the remaining trust between the rival Islamist and secular factions, beginning with Mr. Morsi’s decree on Nov. 22 granting himself powers above any judicial review until the ratification of a new constitution.
At the time, Mr. Morsi said he needed such unchecked power to protect against the threat that Mubarak-appointed judges might dissolve the constitutional assembly. He also tried to give the assembly a two-month extension on its year-end deadline to forge consensus between the Islamist majority and the secular faction — something liberals have sought. But his claim to such power for even a limited period struck those suspicious of the Islamists as a return to autocracy, and his authoritarian decree triggered an immediate backlash.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters accusing Mr. Morsi and his Islamist allies of monopolizing power have poured into the streets. Mobs have attacked more than two dozen Brotherhood offices around the country, including its headquarters. And judges declared a national strike.
In response, his Islamist allies in the assembly stayed up all night to rush out a draft constitution over the boycotts and objections of the secular minority and the Coptic Christian church. Then, worried that the Interior Ministry might fail to protect the presidential palace from sometimes-violent protesters demonstrating outside, Mr. Morsi turned to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups to defend it, resulting in a night of street fighting that killed at least six and wounded hundreds in the worst clashes between political factions since Gamal Abdel Nasser’s coup six decades ago.
International experts who monitored the constituent assembly’s work say that before the crisis, the Islamists and their secular foes had appeared close to resolving their differences and uniting around a document that both sides could accept. Even the draft charter, ultimately rushed out almost exclusively with Islamist support, stops short of the liberals’ worst fears about the imposition of religious rule. But it leaves loopholes and ambiguities that liberals fear an Islamist majority could later use to empower religious groups or restrict individual freedoms, which the secular opposition has repeatedly compared to the theocracy established by the Iranian revolution of 1979.
Mr. Morsi has not yet issued the order, the flagship state newspaper Al Ahram reported. But even if merely a threat, the preparation of the measure suggested a sharp escalation in the political battle between Egypt’s new Islamist leaders and their secular opponents over an Islamist-backed draft constitution. The standoff has already threatened to derail the culmination of Egypt’s promised transition to a constitutional democracy nearly two years after the revolt against the former leader Hosni Mubarak.
In a statement read on state television, a military spokesman warned Saturday of "disastrous consequences" if the crisis gripping Egypt was not resolved and he urged new dialogue as "the best and only way" to overcome the standoff.
The military also pledged to protect state institutions, according to media reports..
A need to rely on the military to secure a referendum scheduled for next Saturday to approve the new charter could undermine Mr. Morsi’s efforts to present the documents as an expression of national consensus that might resolve the crisis.
Even the possibility presents an extraordinary role reversal: an elected president who spent decades opposing Mr. Mubarak’s use of martial law to detain Islamists for challenging his power — a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who himself spent months in jail under Mr. Mubarak’s “emergency law” — is poised to resort to similar tactics to control unrest and violence from secular groups. After six decades during which military-backed secular autocrats used the threat of an Islamist takeover to justify their authoritarian rule, the order would bring the military into the streets to protect an elected Islamist, dashing the whispered hopes of some more secular Egyptians that the military might step in to remove Mr. Morsi from power.
The move would also reflect an equally extraordinary breakdown in Egyptian civic life that in the last two weeks has destroyed most of the remaining trust between the rival Islamist and secular factions, beginning with Mr. Morsi’s decree on Nov. 22 granting himself powers above any judicial review until the ratification of a new constitution.
At the time, Mr. Morsi said he needed such unchecked power to protect against the threat that Mubarak-appointed judges might dissolve the constitutional assembly. He also tried to give the assembly a two-month extension on its year-end deadline to forge consensus between the Islamist majority and the secular faction — something liberals have sought. But his claim to such power for even a limited period struck those suspicious of the Islamists as a return to autocracy, and his authoritarian decree triggered an immediate backlash.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters accusing Mr. Morsi and his Islamist allies of monopolizing power have poured into the streets. Mobs have attacked more than two dozen Brotherhood offices around the country, including its headquarters. And judges declared a national strike.
In response, his Islamist allies in the assembly stayed up all night to rush out a draft constitution over the boycotts and objections of the secular minority and the Coptic Christian church. Then, worried that the Interior Ministry might fail to protect the presidential palace from sometimes-violent protesters demonstrating outside, Mr. Morsi turned to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups to defend it, resulting in a night of street fighting that killed at least six and wounded hundreds in the worst clashes between political factions since Gamal Abdel Nasser’s coup six decades ago.
International experts who monitored the constituent assembly’s work say that before the crisis, the Islamists and their secular foes had appeared close to resolving their differences and uniting around a document that both sides could accept. Even the draft charter, ultimately rushed out almost exclusively with Islamist support, stops short of the liberals’ worst fears about the imposition of religious rule. But it leaves loopholes and ambiguities that liberals fear an Islamist majority could later use to empower religious groups or restrict individual freedoms, which the secular opposition has repeatedly compared to the theocracy established by the Iranian revolution of 1979.