Gaining Power in Parliament, Islamists Block a Cairo Protest
Wednesday, 01 February 2012 14:38
CAIRO — The flexed its muscles here on Tuesday as hundreds of its young members linked arms to block a protest march from reaching Parliament while its lawmakers inside dominated the selection of leaders for legislative committees.
More than 70 people were injured as thousands of protesters jammed against the Brotherhood’s human wall, the Health Ministry said. Thirty people were hospitalized, the ministry said, 10 of them members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The protesters had set out to demand that ’s military rulers surrender power now, before a new constitution is drafted and without any guarantees of immunity from prosecution. But when they confronted the Brotherhood barrier, they quickly shifted their ire to the new target.
“The people want the fall of the Brotherhood,” they chanted. “No Brotherhood, no officers. Down, down with military rule!”
Some threw plastic bottles or rocks at the Brotherhood’s members, and there were reports of some scuffles. But for the most part, the Brotherhood members remained impassive and silent.
The confrontation was a vivid illustration of the inversion in the Brotherhood’s status. Once outlawed and persecuted, the Islamist group is now the party in power, with half the seats in the newly elected Parliament.
Civilian members of the Brotherhood are even playing the role of informal police officers in keeping the peace, as they did during demonstrations in Tahrir Square last week. On Tuesday, members of the central security police stood idly behind the Brotherhood’s lines, some officers leaning casually on riot shields.
The demonstrators are angry at the Brotherhood in part because it has stood resolutely by the agreement it struck with the ruling military council in November. The deal calls for the generals to hand over power by the end of June, after the ratification of a constitution and the election of a president. The demonstrators worry that the military rulers, as they have before, may try to use their authority to carve out privileges or immunities for themselves.
Ziad el-Elaimy, who has a seat in Parliament and was a left-leaning organizer of the revolt that led to President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, said that he and more than 30 other deputies left the chamber to join the protesters. The speaker of Parliament would not give them a chance “to tell the people out here that we are with them,” Mr. Elaimy said on the street outside as admirers swarmed around him.
“The Brotherhood has started to play the role of security, and that is not their job,” he said. “Parliament was elected for the people,” Mr. Elaimy added, “but the Brothers are there for themselves.”
Inside the building, Parliament’s first working session continued. In all, the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party claimed 11 committee chairmanships, and the ultraconservative Islamist party Al Nour took four; non-Islamists received four committees as well, covering culture and the media, human rights, legislation and the constitution, and Arab affairs.