Soaring Tensions as Junta ‘Warns’ Protesters Rallying in Cairo

Junta Says Protesters 'Threaten the Higher Interests' of State

Five days after the Egyptian presidential election closed, the results still haven’t been released to the public, but massive protests in Tahrir Square, centering on criticizing the junta for disbanding parliament last week and declaring the military the nation’s “legislative” body.

Some 10,000 protesters were in Tahrir today, and the anger at the junta is likely to boil over if, as many are expecting, the “preliminary” vote count is overturned and the junta declares Air Marshall Ahmed Shafiq the president.

The possibility isn’t sitting well with the junta, either, which is already publicly warning that they will act with “the utmost firmness” against dissent, claiming that it threatens “the higher interests of the country.”

The warnings go along with the official narrative of the junta, as reflected in the pro-junta news outlets in the nation. The outlets have been calling the Muslim Brotherhood, which had the leadership of the now closed parliament and whose candidate is the presumptive winner of the election, as a “criminal gang” and predicting the “massacre of the century.”

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.