CROWDS marched to Cairo’s Tahrir Square again yesterday after the April 6 movement called for a protest starting at 5.00pm (1500 GMT) ‘against the soft military coup.’
‘We will save our revolution. We will save Egypt from military rule,’ the group said in a statement sent out early in the morning on Friday.
This came in the wake of Thursday’s ruling by the Supreme Constitutional Court that dissolved parliament and kept Mubarak’s last premier in this weekend’s presidential race.
Today and tomorrow’s run-off election was billed as the culmination of a transition before the military generals, who have ruled Egypt for 16 months since Mubarak’s overthrow, formally hand power to a new president.
The new leader will now be elected without a parliament and without a new constitution to outline the extent of his permanent powers.
Egyptians fear that presidential contender Ahmed Shafik will seek to rebuild Mubarak’s repressive state and reverse the gains of the revolution.
He is pitted in the race against Mohamed Morsy of the Muslim Brotherhood, who pledged to press ahead with his presidential bid regardless.
Shafik told jubilant supporters at a rally at a hotel on the outskirts of Cairo that the court rulings were ‘historic’. ‘The army and the people are on one hand,’ they chanted.
Outside the court on Thursday, protesters chanted ‘Down, down with military rule’ and threw stones at troops lined up around the building on the banks of the Nile.