Egyptians Prepare for Third Day of Protest After Anniversary
January 27, 2012, 7:45 AM ESTBy Dahlia Kholaif
Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Egyptian activists called for marches and rallies in central Cairo to protest military rule, two days after the country marked the anniversary of the revolt that ousted Hosni Mubarak.
Protesters camped overnight in Tahrir Square, the focus of the mass rallies that ended the former president’s three-decade rule. Tens of thousands filled the plaza on Jan. 25, some calling on the ruling generals to speed up the transfer of power to civilians, others celebrating the anniversary of the start of protests that ousted Mubarak.
“A huge turnout is expected in Tahrir,” Gamal Eid, a human rights lawyer, said by phone late yesterday. “Such protests are important to show the army that ceding power to civilians is paramount to all Egyptians and that it can’t breach promises it had made, as it did before. It’s also a clear message to the parliament that people will turn against it if it doesn’t meet their demands.”
Seven weeks of elections, in which Islamist groups led by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom & Justice party took almost three-quarters of the seats in parliament, have failed to quiet activists organizing the anti-military rallies. Protesters accuse the army of mismanaging the country’s transition and using tactics similar to Mubarak’s regime to stifle dissent. The military council has said it will cede power when a president is elected by the end of June.
Brotherhood’s Demands
The Brotherhood hasn’t lent its support to demands that the generals immediately leave. While the anniversary was an occasion for “celebrations, not protests,” the group called for “the rest of the revolution’s demands to be realized as soon as possible,” spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan said ahead of the anniversary.
Egypt’s elected assembly held its inaugural session Jan. 23. One of its first tasks is to select a committee that will write the new constitution.
Egypt’s benchmark stock index rose yesterday to become the world’s second-best performer as foreign investors returned after yesterday’s peaceful rallies. The EGX 30 soared 7.2 percent to 4,432.99 at the 2:30 p.m. close in Cairo, the most since February 2008 and the second-best after Cyprus among 91 global indexes tracked by Bloomberg.
Still, the index is down 30 percent in the past 12 months. The unrest has deterred tourists and foreign investors and curbed economic growth to 1.8 percent in the fiscal year through June, the slowest pace in at least a decade. Tourist arrivals fell 33 percent last year, while international reserves are at the lowest level since March 2005.
IMF Request
Egypt formally requested a $3.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund on Jan. 16 to support the economy. The army-appointed government will also invite a mission from the World Bank to discuss a $500 million loan and another from the African Development Bank for talks on a loan of the same amount, Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Fayza Aboulnaga told reporters yesterday in Cairo.
Ahead of the anniversary, the ruling military council pledged to release prisoners and partially lift the country’s state of emergency, which extends the powers of the police, with the exception of “crimes of thuggery.”
--With assistance from Ahmed A Namatalla in Cairo. Editors: Digby Lidstone, Louis Meixler, Terry Atlas
To contact the reporters on this story: Dahlia Kholaif in Kuwait at dkholaif@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net
