A new but unclear period in Egyptian History
Twenty-five new regional governors took the oath of office on Monday before Egypt’s interim President Adly Mansour.
The heads of two governorates – Red Sea and Menoufiya – have yet to be named.
Not a single member of the Muslim Brotherhood was included in the gubernatorial shakeup, the first since the army’s July 3 ouster of elected President Mohamed Morsi.
Nine new deputy governors were also sworn in before the interim president on Tuesday.
The reshuffle sparked anger among Morsi’s supporters – and many of his opponents – due to the appointment of several new governors said to be former members of ousted President Hosni Mubarak’s now-defunct National Democratic Party (NDP).
Such Mubarak-era holdovers are commonly referred to as “feloul” in Arabic, meaning “remnants” of the regime that was toppled by Egypt’s 2011 revolution.
In the Menoufiya governorate, the nomination of Yasser al-Hodeibi, who ran as an NDP candidate in 2010 parliamentary polls, drew fire from the same forces that led the June 30 protests that culminated in Morsi’s ouster by the military.
“The nomination of a Feloul figure like al-Hodeibi is a clear provocation to revolutionaries and governorate residents,” Abdullah al-Sayad, member of the April 6 protest movement in Menoufiya, told the Anadolu Agency.
“Most of the governorate’s political and revolutionary groups will not accept it; it will not pass without trouble,” he said of the move.
The Tamarod (Rebellion) movement, the driving force behind the anti-Morsi protests, also denounced the names tipped for the governorships, describing them as “disappointing because they feature several former regime figures.”
Meanwhile, pro-Morsi protesters staged a march from Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, where they have been camped out for more than six weeks, to the Ittihadiya presidential palace to voice their rejection of the governors’ reshuffle.
Turkey Tribune
