Egypt Critical News Update #17 Military Coup Moving Swiftly Towards Power Consolidation

Restoring Law and Order and Business as Usual Under a Coup

The army has moved swiftly to try to "restore order" to the area around Tahrir Square. The situation is tense
and counter demonstrators have been brought back into action to further intimidate the revolutionary forces still in the square demanding that the military turn power over immediately to a civilian-military combined council as specified earlier in their list of demands.

Here's a quick glance at how things have been developing on the ground today, Egypt time, from Al Jazeera:

8:39am Soldiers have moved in among protesters still in Tahrir Square, Reuters reports, as traffic started flowing through the square again this morning. Protesters chanted "Peacefully, peacefully" as the soldiers moved, and a few resisted the line of troops."The army is the backbone of Egypt. Their solution is not to remove us from the square. They must respond to our demands," a protester said over loudspeakers.

9:18am Our correspondent James Bays says there have been some "very small scuffles" as troops tried to get protesters to leave Tahrir Square in Cairo.
"I think it reflects a bigger problem," he says. "The military believes that now Mubarak is out, it's time for stability. But some of the protesters think not enough has been done yet. They don't want to clear that square until the army has handed over to a civilian government." 

10:45am The cabinet, appointed when Hosni Mubarak was still in office, will not undergo a major reshuffle and will stay to oversee a political transformation in the coming months, the cabinet spokesman says.
"The shape of the government will stay until the process of transformation is done in a few months, then a new government will be appointed based on the democratic principles in place," the spokesman told Reuters, adding that it was possible some portfolios could change hands in that period.

12:08pm Our correspondent Hoda Abdel-Hamid says a small demonstration chanting "the people and the police are one" entered Tahrir Square a short while ago but was booed out by the remaining pro-democracy protesters.

12:18pm Military has been firing into the air to disperse a protest in front of the interior ministry. A source told Al Jazeera that 500 police protesters had gathered to call for higher wages and to protest against the senior officials of the police force for destroying the credibility and image of the police.

1:01pm A couple of hundred people are in Tahrir Square. Some groups chant "The people want you to leave the square" and others respond "We're not leaving".

2:50pm: Ahmed Shafiq, Egypt's prime minister, holds his first news conference since Hosni Mubarak stepped down on Friday. He says:

"Our main concern is security, how to restore security to the Egyptian citizens."

4:30pm: Our correspondent James Bays says the Egyptian military has dissolved the parliament and announced that elections will take place in September.

Egyptian TV read out the communicate, saying that elections will take place in September, and the military will only run the country until September.

This is a very important news, the protesters have been asking for a specific timeline, they wanted to know when this transition was going to take place, and when there was going to be an elected civilian government, and now the military supreme command have answered that.

It is interesting that This military communicate came out shortly after the prime minister spoke to the nation, I think that they are showing where the power is, making it clear that for now the military high command replaces the president in the structure, and the prime minister does what he is told." 

Of course, no one in the legitimate opposition mandated or asked the army to govern until September or for any other length of time...Those are the voices of the US, Israel, and the Egyptian oligarchy. This remains an aberration and a right wing COUP and I expect large sectors of the Egyptian opposition will be opposed to it.