Atlantic Council

In an effort to improve government performance, President Mohammed Morsi introduced a limited cabinet reshuffle, in which a number of ministers from Hisham Qandil’s government were replaced. Most striking among the replacements was the appointment of Judge Hatem Bagato as Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, as well as the appointment of Judge Ahmed Suleiman as Minister of Justice.

Dozens of Egyptian military and police armored vehicles crossed into Sinai on Monday, beefing up the security presence in the volatile peninsula five days after suspected militants kidnapped six policemen and a border guard there. 

The Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, has already answered the question in the title by declaring that “Egypt will never go bankrupt”. But judging by some of the recent headlines, skeptics are still unconvinced. What does it mean for a country to go bankrupt anyway? And is Egypt really on the brink of financial collapse? 

Opposition and revolutionary groups are organizing only two marches this Friday, as some figures saying they are reserving their organizational strength for a million-man protest planned for the anniversary of President Mohamed Morsi’s inauguration on 30 June. The main focus of the marches, however, is raising awareness for the Tamarod campaign.

It is no coincidence that the people who believe TV ads marketing a so called: “magic patch” as a cure for every ailment or pain are the same people addicted to the ‘text-to-win’ contests that carry the promise of a trip to the holy land (‘Umra) in exchange for answering questions such as "What is the name of the Prophet of Islam?

On May 13, the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East held an event to release a new issue brief, Egypt’s Litigious Transition: Judicial Intervention and the Muddied Road to Democracy. Director of the Rafik Hariri Center Michele Dunne moderated a discussion with the author Mahmoud Hamad, who is assistant professor at Drake University and Cairo University, and Yussef Auf, a nonresident fellow with the Hariri Center, who joined via Skype.

Islamist gunmen abducted seven members of the Egyptian security forces in the Sinai Peninsula on Thursday and want jailed militants released in exchange for the men, security sources said. The gunmen kidnapped the men as they travelled between the towns of al-Arish and Rafah in the early hours of the morning. 

In analyzing the actions of Egyptian President Morsi and by extension, the ruling Muslim Brotherhood, Western analysts have expended much energy calculating the group’s impending moves and projecting where the ruling party plans to take Egypt. However, these expectations and calculations have largely been built on the false premise that the Brotherhood is an inherently political actor that governs within the formal constraints of political savviness.

Egypt's upper house of parliament, the Shura Council, will discuss a disputed law on the judiciary on 25 May, in a move that opponents of the law have strongly criticized and which has led representatives of the judiciary including the Supreme Judicial Council and the Judges Club  to drop out of a proposed judicial reform conference with President Morsi. 

In a visit to Cairo, Special Assistant to the President and White House Coordinator for the Middle East Philip Gordon reaffirmed the importance of bilateral relations and US support for Egypt’s transition to democracy.  The Obama administration, however, is also blasting Egyptian authorities for detaining a prominent youth movement leader, Ahmed Maher, on possible charges including “incitement to protest” and insulting the government’s interior minister.

It is apparent that, due to culminating political and economic crises, Egypt is losing much of the international support and global public sympathy for its revolution, and popular demand for democracy, social justice and progress.

Egyptian police arrested three men suspected of planning attacks on targets in Cairo and Alexandria, including a foreign embassy, Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim announced Saturday. 

With a volatile and tumultuous environment surrounding the relationship between the judicial authority and the ruling regime, a Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) delegation visited President Mohammed Morsi on April 28.

Islamist powers staged a million-man demonstration on Friday at al-Azhar Mosque to express their support for Jerusalem and protest against Israeli violations and the siege of al-Aqsa Mosque.