Egypt army blunder an opportunity for Morsi

A blunder by the Egyptian army that left 16 border guards dead at the hands of Islamist militants gave president Mohamed Morsi an early chance to claw back powers from a military whose political influence he had always wanted to curb.

A week after the raid on Egypt’s Sinai border that outraged ordinary Egyptians and some soldiers, angry at what they saw as a failure in military leadership, Morsi on Sunday dismissed the country’s two top generals and tore up an army decree that had curbed his powers.

It was a dramatic move, all the more surprising coming from a man who was the Muslim Brotherhood’s last-minute candidate for the presidential election that ended in June, pilloried at the time as a stiff politician seen more as a Brotherhood functionary than a statesman-in-waiting.