As Security Crisis Deepens in Egypt After Verdict, Calls for a Military Coup
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and KAREEM FAHIM
Published: March 9, 2013
PORT SAID, Egypt — Just months ago, demonstrators here and around Egypt were chanting for the end of military rule. But on Saturday, a court ruling about a soccer riot set off angry mobs that burned two buildings in Cairo and threatened the Suez Canal here, many in the crowd here said they had changed their minds. They argued that a military coup might now be the best hope to restore order.
“Military rule was bad, but they would be better,” Ahmed Abdel Fattah, 50, said. “Where is the state? Where is the interior ministry, the government? Where are the decisions to protect the interests of the people?” He added: “The military should take over until the police are ready.”
Although such calls are hardly universal and there is no threat of an imminent coup, murmurs that military intervention may be the only solution to the collapse of public security can be heard across the country, in circles opposed to the Islamists who have dominated post-Mubarak elections. The talk reflects the dire state of the security crisis, which threatens not only Egypt’s transition to democracy but also its hopes to stave off economic collapse. And here in Port Said, a focal point of the widening crisis since the police lost control more than a month ago, a form of local military takeover has already taken place.
As the city braced for a court ruling on Saturday about responsibility for a deadly riot last year at a match between Port Said and Cairo, security forces fled the city. The few local police stations where staff was still present “suspended” their work, officers said, in what appeared to be part of a widening strike by police and security forces across the country.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/world/middleeast/egypt-sentences-2012-soccer-riot.html?google_editors_picks=true
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