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Egypt Protesters gesture at military police through a barbed wire barricade during a protest against presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq outside the Supreme Constitutional Court in Cairo, Egypt.
Egypt Protesters gesture at military police through a barbed wire barricade during a protest against presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq outside the Supreme Constitutional Court in Cairo, Egypt.
Judges appointed by Hosni Mubarak have dissolved the Islamist-dominated parliament and ruled his former prime minister eligible for the presidential runoff election this weekend - setting the stage for the military and remnants of the old regime to stay in power.
Thursday's politically charged rulings dealt a heavy blow to the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, with one senior member calling the decisions a "full-fledged coup", and the group vowed to rally the public against Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister to serve under Mubarak.
The decision by the Supreme Constitutional Court effectively erased the tenuous progress from Egypt's troubled transition in the past year, leaving the country with no parliament and concentrating power even more firmly in the hands of the generals who took over from Mubarak.
Several hundred people gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square after the rulings to denounce the action and rally against Shafiq, the presidential candidate seen by critics as a symbol of Mubarak's autocratic rule. But with no calls by the Brotherhood or other groups for massive demonstrations, the crowd did not grow.
Comment: When reading the above propaganda, it is best to apply the '180 degree rule'. These 'human rights' groups ARE the authoritarians helping fellow authoritarians in countries on their leaders' hit-list to rebel against governments that care a damn sight better for their people than the US and EU ones do.