Egypt: Military show support for President Morsi

14 Aug 2012, 9:39 am   -   Source: AAP
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A day after Egyptian president's shake-up of the military leadership, the country's former military rulers have signalled their support for the moves. 

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Egypt's military has signalled its support for the president's surprise decision to retire the defence minister and chief of staff and seize back powers that the nation's top generals grabbed from his office.

President Mohamed Morsi's shake-up of the military on Sunday took the nation by surprise.

It transformed his image overnight from a weak leader to a savvy politician who carefully timed his move against the military brass who stripped him of significant powers days before he took office on June 30.

A posting on a Facebook page known to be close to the country's former military rulers said the changes amounted to the "natural" handing over of leadership to a younger generation.

"A greeting from the heart filled with love, appreciation and respect to our leaders who passed on the banner. They will be in our eyes and hearts," said the posting.

If Morsi's decisions go unchallenged, it should end the power struggle that pitted him against the powerful military.

That could mean the ushering out of six decades of de facto military rule since army officers seized power in a coup in 1952.

But removing the defence minister and chief of staff does not necessarily mean the military, Egypt's most powerful institution, has been defeated or that it would give up decades of perks and prestige without a fight.

Morsi has been locked in a power struggle with the military since he took office. But after militants killed 16 Egyptian soldiers a week ago at a border post with Israel in Sinai, he has sought more aggressively to assert his authority over the top generals.

On Sunday, he ordered the retirement of Defence Minister Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi and Chief of Staff General Sami Annan. But he appointed them as presidential advisers and awarded them some of the nation's highest honours - something that suggested they agreed, perhaps grudgingly, in advance.

Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist Islamist group, won both parliamentary and presidential elections in the first free and fair votes in Egypt's modern history.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which ruled Egypt for 17 months after Hosni Mubarak was forced out, stripped the presidency of many of its key powers before it handed the office to Morsi.

Tantawi was the head of SCAF and Annan was No.2. Tantawi was also Mubarak's defence minister for two decades before the regime was ousted.

Days before Morsi's inauguration, SCAF decreed constitutional amendments that gave them the power to legislate after they dissolved parliament, as well as control over the national budget. It also gave them control over the process of drafting a new constitution.

With his latest move, Morsi reclaimed the powers taken from him, seizing back sole control of the constitution drafting process and the right to legislate.

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