Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times
A Cairo rally for President Mohamed Morsi, who wants expanded powers, drew a crowd of hundreds of thousands on Saturday.
CAIRO — President Mohamed Morsi speaks darkly of imminent threats from a conspiracy of unnamed foreign enemies and corrupt businessmen. He vows to uncover counterrevolutionaries hiding under judicial robes. His advisers charge that loyalists of the former dictator have infiltrated the opposition, saying it would gladly sacrifice democracy to defeat the Islamists.
Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters
A large Cairo rally on Saturday added to a debate over President Mohamed Morsi’s commitment to democracy.
In a one-week blitz, Mr. Morsi and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood cast aside two years of cautious pragmatism in an effort to seize full control of Egypt’s political transition. Mr. Morsi decreed himself above the reach of the courts until completion of a new constitution. He went around the laws to install his own public prosecutor in a stated drive to go after those who abused power or reaped profits under the old government. And his Islamist allies in the constitutional assembly rammed through a charter over the objections of their secular opposition and the Coptic Christian Church.
On Saturday, Mr. Morsi pushed forward with plans for the new constitution, setting a national referendum on it for Dec. 15.
“I pray to God and hope that it will be a new day of democracy in Egypt,” he said in a nationally televised speech, calling for a “national dialogue.”
But his recent tone and actions reminded critics of the autocratic ways of his predecessor, and have aroused a new debate here about his commitment to democracy and pluralism at a time when he and his Islamist allies dominate political life.
Mr. Morsi’s advisers call the tactics a regrettable but necessary response to genuine threats to the political transition from what they call the deep state — the vestiges of the autocracy of former President Hosni Mubarak, especially in the news media and the judiciary.
But his critics say they hear a familiar paranoia in Mr. Morsi’s new tone that reminds them of talk of the “hidden hands” and foreign plots that Mr. Mubarak once used to justify his authoritarianism.
“I have sent warnings to many people who know who they are, who may be committing crimes against the homeland,” Mr. Morsi declared in an interview with state television on Thursday night, referring repeatedly to secret information about a “conspiracy” and “real and imminent threats” that he would not disclose. “If anybody tries to derail the transition, I will not allow them.”
In a speech to supporters that unveiled his new push to seize control of the transition’s end, Mr. Morsi was even more zealous. “To the corrupters who hide under respectable cover, I say, ‘Never imagine that I can’t see you,”’ he declared. “I’m on the lookout for them and will never let them go.”
The Muslim Brotherhood mobilized hundreds of thousands of supporters to rally on his behalf on Saturday at Cairo University. They chanted for legal action against the Mubarak-appointed judge who led the call for a judicial strike to protest Mr. Morsi’s attempts to limit judicial power over the transition, and against the Mubarak-appointed public prosecutor Mr. Morsi sought to remove.
The demonstrators denounced both men as remnants of the old government in disguise.
Across town, several thousand of Mr. Morsi’s opponents rallied in Tahrir Square to oppose the draft constitution and what they describe as Mr. Morsi’s power grab. In response to the referendum announcement, Mohamed ElBaradei, an opposition leader and former United Nations diplomat, sent a Twitter message that the draft constitution “undermines basic freedoms and violates universal values.”
“The struggle will continue,” he added.
The Brotherhood has adopted a tone of “open threats and intimidation,” said Hossam Bahgat, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. Liberal critics note that the Brotherhood has already broken its pledges not to take more than a third of the parliamentary seats, run a presidential candidate or monopolize power.
Amid Egypt’s Duel on Democracy, Morsi Calls for Vote
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Amid Egypt’s Duel on Democracy, Morsi Calls for Vote
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Amid Egypt’s Duel on Democracy, Morsi Calls for Vote
