Egypt: Morsi faces judicial revolt

Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, a prosecutor whom Morsi seeks to fire, declared to a crowd of cheering judges at Egypt's high court that the presidential decree was "null and void". Mahmoud, who was appointed by Morsi's predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, denounced "the systematic campaign against the country's institutions in general and the judiciary in particular."

Outside the court, police fired tear gas at protesters who were denouncing Morsi and trying to force their way into the building.

The judicial backlash widened a power struggle over the drafting of a new constitution that has raised alarms about a return to autocracy 22 months after the ouster of Mubarak.

Morsi, the Islamist who became Egypt's first elected president in June, is seeking to assert an authority unchecked by judicial review to forestall a court ruling expected on December 2 that could disband the constitutional assembly and extend by two months the year-end deadline for that body to finish its work.

A high court dissolved an earlier assembly that was to draft a constitution last spring, and Morsi's supporters accuse their secular opponents and judges appointed by Mubarak of trying to delay or derail the transition to democracy to prevent the Islamist majority from taking power.

The president's opponents, in turn, accuse him of seizing unchecked authority, noting that he holds executive and legislative power under a vague patchwork of interim constitutional declarations put in place by the military leaders who managed the first 18 months of Egypt's post-Mubarak transition. The Supreme Constitutional Court dissolved the Islamist-dominated Parliament on the eve of Morsi's election.

A council that oversees the judiciary on Saturday denounced Morsi's decree, which was issued Thursday, as "an unprecedented attack" on its authority, and urged the president to retract the aspects of the decree circumscribing judicial oversight. State news media reported that judges and prosecutors walked out in Alexandria, and there were other news reports of walkouts in Qulubiya and Beheira.

In Cairo on Saturday, a coalition of secular opposition leaders and parties called for Morsi to withdraw his decree and disband the constituent assembly. The groups have long complained about the body's domination by Islamists.

On Friday night their supporters set up a tent city for an open-ended sit-in in Tahrir Square, the centre of the Egyptian revolt, and the groups have called for a demonstration there on Tuesday.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group allied with Morsi, has called for demonstrations Sunday and Tuesday to support his moves as an effort to speed up Egypt's transition to a constitutional democracy.

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