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Officers
fired teargas at up to 10,000 demonstrators angered by Mursi’s drive to
hold a referendum on a new constitution on 15 December. Some broke
through police lines around his palace and protested next to the
perimeter wall.
The crowds had gathered nearby in
what organizers had dubbed “last warning” protests against Mursi, who
infuriated opponents with a 22 November decree that expanded his powers.
“The people want the downfall of the regime,” the demonstrators
chanted.
“The president left the palace,” a presidential source, who declined to be named, told Reuters. A security source at the presidency also said the president had departed.
Mursi
ignited a storm of unrest in his bid to prevent a judiciary still
packed with appointees of ousted predecessor Hosni Mubarak from
derailing a troubled political transition.
Facing
the gravest crisis of his six-month-old tenure, the Islamist president
has shown no sign of buckling under pressure.Riot police at the palace
faced off against activists chanting “leave, leave” and holding Egyptian
flags with “no to the constitution” written on them. Protesters had
assembled near mosques in northern Cairo before marching towards the
palace.
“Our marches are against tyranny and the
void constitutional decree and we won’t retract our position until our
demands are met,” said Hussein Abdel Ghany, a spokesman for an
opposition coalition of liberal, leftist and other disparate factions.
Protesters
later surrounded the palace, with some climbing on gates at the rear to
look down into the gardens.At one point, people clambered onto a police
armoured vehicle and waved flags, while riot police huddled nearby.The
health ministry said 18 people had been injured in clashes next to the
palace, according to the state news agency.
Yearning for stability
Despite
the latest protests, there has been only a limited response to
opposition calls for a mass campaign of civil disobedience in the Arab
world’s most populous country and cultural hub, where many people yearn
for a return to stability.
A few hundred
protesters gathered earlier near Mursi’s house in a suburb east of
Cairo, chanting slogans against his decree and against the Muslim
Brotherhood, from which the president emerged to win a free election in
June. Police closed the road to stop them from coming any closer, a
security official said.
Opposition groups have
accused Mursi of making a dictatorial power grab to push through a
constitution drafted by an assembly dominated by his supporters, with a
referendum planned for 15 December.
They say the
draft constitution does not reflect the interests of Egypt’s liberals
and other groups, an accusation dismissed by Islamists who insist it is a
balanced document.
Egypt’s most widely read
independent newspapers did not publish on Tuesday in protest at Mursi’s
“dictatorship”. Banks closed early to let staff go home safely in case
of trouble.
Abdelrahman Mansour in Cairo’s Tahrir
Square, the cradle of the anti-Mubarak revolt, said, “The presidency
believes the opposition is too weak and toothless.Today is the day we
show them the opposition is a force to be reckoned with.”
But
after winning post-Mubarak elections and pushing the Egyptian military
out of the political driving seat it held for decades, the Islamists
sense their moment has come to shape the future of Egypt, a longtime US
ally whose 1979 peace treaty with Israel is a cornerstone of
Washington’s Middle East policy.
The Muslim
Brotherhood and its allies, which staged a huge pro-Mursi rally in Cairo
on Saturday, are confident enough members of the judiciary will be
available to oversee the mid-December referendum, despite calls by some
judges for a boycott.
“The crisis we have suffered
for two weeks is on its way to an end, and very soon, God willing,”
Saad al-Katatni, leader of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party,
told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
Cairo
stocks closed up 3.5% as investors took heart at what they saw as
prospects for a return to stability after the referendum in a country
whose divisions have only widened since a mass uprising toppled Mubarak
on 11 February 2011.
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