Army issues warning as Egyptians go to polls

EGYPT’s army ruler warned yesterday he would not tolerate any pressure ahead of new protests demanding that he step down on the eve of the country’s first elections since the January revolution.

Egyptians go to the polls today to cast their votes for a new parliament after the end of the 30-year rule of strongman Hosni Mubarak, forced from power in February in a seminal moment of the Arab Spring.

The run-up to voting in the cultural heart of the Arab world and the region’s most populous country has been marred by violence and fears of chaos as the army, protesters and new political figures fight for influence.

Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, who heads a council of generals who took power after Mubarak’s fall, called on voters to turn out and said he would not buckle in the face of demands for the army to hand control to civilian leaders.

“We are faced with enormous challenges and we will not allow any individual or party to pressure the armed forces,” he told reporters, adding that Egypt stood at “a crossroads”.

“Either succeed politically, economically and socially or face very dangerous consequences . . . and we will not let that happen,” he said, according to the MENA news agency.

Protesters have occupied Cairo’s Tahrir Square, epicentre of the mass protests that drove Mubarak from power, but this time their target is Tantawi and his fellow generals.

Thousands gathered yesterday ahead of a planned “million-person march” called by The Revolution Youth Coalition to reject the new 78-year-old caretaker prime minister Kamal al-Ganzuri, appointed by the army last week.

“Down with the military!” shouted a group of young men on the edge of the square underneath a lamp post from which an effigy dressed in army green was hanging by the neck.

Feeding the anger of those assembled in Tahrir, many of whom carried visible injuries from last week’s unrest, was the death of an unarmed 19-year-old demonstrator on Saturday who was crushed by a police truck.

The demonstrators fear that Egypt’s temporary military rulers are looking to consolidate their influence and are too quick to resort to Mubarak-era tactics of violence and repression when faced with opposition.

“I believe the Egyptian authorities must impose public order in a different way and it is time they hand over power to civilians,” France’s interior minister Claude Gueant told French media on Sunday.

The generals have pushed back the original timetable for transferring power to a civilian government and demanded a final say on all legislation concerning the army in the future.

“They don’t want to give back power,” said 18-year-old student Raghda in the square yesterday.

Outside Tahrir, the political leaders expected to shape the democratic future of the country of more than 80 million people are locked in a fight for influence with the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).

In an effort to resolve the crisis, Tantawi called a meeting with all political party leaders and future presidential candidates, but it was boycotted by several leading figures.

The violence over the past week, which has seen 42 people die as police used live ammunition and tear gas, has cast a pall over the start of voting that was intended to usher in a new democratic era.