Military grip tightens around Egypt

Just before the deadline, Mohammed Morsi, inaugurated a year ago after the 2011 fall of his predecessor Hosni Mubarak, repeated his vows not to step down in the face of millions of protesters in the streets in the biggest anti-government rallies the country has seen.

His supporters have vowed to resist what they call a coup against democracy, and have also taken to the streets by the tens of thousands. At least 39 people have been killed in clashes since Sunday, raising fears the crisis could further explode into violence

In a last minute statement before the deadline, Mr Morsi again rejected the military’s intervention, saying abiding by his electoral legitimacy was the only way to prevent violence. He criticised the military for “taking only one side.”

“One mistake that cannot be accepted, and I say this as president of all Egyptians, is to take sides,” he said. “Justice dictates that the voice of the masses from all squares should be heard.”

The free electing of a president had been one of the aspirations of the 2011 revolt that toppled Mubarak. Mr Morsi’s opponents say they want to remove a president who has lost his election legitimacy by trying to monopolize power with Islamists – and that if it takes his army intervention to bring in new leadership and put the country on a more democratic path, so be it.

The army has insisted it is not carrying out a coup, but acting on the will of the people to clear the way for a new leadership. But on it clearly was positioning itself to maintain control during any unrest.

The military beefed up its presence inside the headquarters of state television in central Cairo. Crack troops were deployed in news-production areas. Officers from the army’s media department moved inside the newsroom and were monitoring output, though not yet interfering, staff said.

The state TV is run by the information minister, a Muslim Brotherhood member put in the post by Mr Morsi, and its coverage had largely been in favour of the government. But already in the past two days, the coverage saw a marked shift, with more balanced reporting showing the anti-Morsi protests along with pro-Morsi ones. State radio has seen a similar shift.

The authoritative, state-run Al-Ahram newspaper – which also seemed to be following a military line – reported that the military had placed several leaders of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood under surveillance and issued a foreign travel ban on the group’s top leaders.

The head of the army, defence minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, held a group meeting with leading reform advocate Mohammed ElBaradei, Egypt’s top Muslim cleric – Al-Azhar Sheik Ahmed el-Tayeb – and Coptic Pope Tawadros II to discuss its political road map. Also attending were a representative of the new youth movement behind this week’s protests and some members of the ultra-conservative Salafi movements.

Under a plan leaked to state media, the military would install a new interim leadership, the Islamist-backed constitution suspended and the Islamist-dominated parliament dissolved.

Massive crowds of anti-Morsi protesters moved back into the main squares of Cairo and other major cities for a fourth straight day. Cairo’s central Tahrir Square was a sea of furiously waving Egyptian flags as the throngs waited for an announcement by the military that the deed was done.

The looming showdown follows a night of deadly clashes in Cairo and elsewhere in the country that left at least 23 people dead, most in a single incident near the main Cairo University campus. At least 39 people have died since the protests began on Sunday.