EGYPT: Military leader unfazed by criticism and growing anger

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REPORTING FROM CAIRO -- The head of Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, said he was not worried by the public’s growing frustration over the military’s control of the country amid accusations that generals are suppressing democracy and human rights.

‘We won’t stop before those who speak and criticize. Nothing stops us and we will carry Egypt to stability,’ Tantawi said during an inauguration of a chemical factory on Sunday. The military council has been under fire for not lifting the country’s 30-year-old emergency law as well as over new election laws and the continuing trials of civilians by military courts.

Tantawi’s comments came one day after representatives of 13 political parties met with SCAF’s chief of staff, Gen. Sami Anan, amid threats to boycott November’s parliamentary elections if the newly introduced electoral law wasn’t amended to prevent members of toppled President Hosni Mubarak’s outlawed party from winning seats. The military responded by allowing candidates from sanctioned political parties to more widely compete.

In response to demands for a specific time line for transferring power to a civilian authority, SCAF announced that sessions of the elected lower house of parliament would begin in January rather than March, and that lower and upper houses of parliament would assemble in April to choose a committee to draft a new constitution.

But SCAF has still not committed to a date for presidential elections as it is expected to take several months to draft a new constitution.

In his comments Sunday, Tantawi also defended his testimony last week in the trial of Mubarak, who is charged with corruption and complicity to commit murder in the deaths of hundreds of protesters during last winter’s uprising. Civil rights lawyers complained that Tantawi’s testimony, which was closed to the media, was favorable to Mubarak and that they were not allowed to cross-examine the field marshal.

During a televised speech in April, Tantawi told a graduating class of police officers that SCAF members met shortly after the revolution began on Jan. 25 and decided not to fire live ammunition at protesters. Those comments suggested, according to civil rights lawyers, that the military had opted to ignore orders by Mubarak. Lawyers in the courtroom last week said that Tantawi denied there were orders to use deadly force.

‘It [the testimony] was the testimony of truth from a man who fought for more than 40 years for the sake of God and Egypt,’ Tantawi, who was Mubarak’s confidant and minister of defense for decades, said Sunday. He added: ‘We were not asked to shoot at people and we’ll never fire live gunshots.’

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-- Amro Hassan in Cairo