Egypt calls for aid amid instability after overthrow of veteran ruler

CAIRO, Tuesday

Egypt today called for international support to speed its recovery after its military rulers urged an end to labour strikes that have erupted since the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak.

The worker protests that had gripped the country abated today as it observed a religious holiday, but they threatened to flare again as Egyptians used their newly-won freedom to press for higher wages and better conditions.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said the economy had been “severely affected by the political crisis that has shaken the country” and called for international aid after phoning his US, British and Saudi counterparts.

Mr Gheit’s remarks came as EU finance ministers were to meet to discuss requests from Cairo to freeze the assets of members of Mubarak’s toppled regime following widespread allegations of corruption during his 30-year reign.

Egypt has launched graft investigations and slapped travel bans on several former ministers, including sacked prime minister Ahmed Nazif and the hated former head of the feared police, interior minister Habib al-Adly.

The military junta which assumed power following Mubarak’s resignation on Friday has largely dissolved his regime and promised democratic elections in six months while in the meantime urging calm on Egypt’s streets.

“Honourable citizens can see that protests at this critical time will have a negative effect in harming the security of the country,” the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces announced Monday, though it stopped short of an outright ban.

The 18-day popular uprising that toppled Mubarak had splintered into pay strikes by workers in the banking, transport, health care, oil, tourism and textiles sectors, as well as state-owned media and government bodies.

The strikes — many of which were aimed at removing corrupt union leaders tied to Mubarak — came to a halt the following day as Egypt marked the birth of the Prophet Mohammed, a Muslim holiday.

The strikes have prompted the stock exchange to once again postpone reopening until next week, further clouding the economic outlook after the uprising dealt a major blow to tourism and other vital industries.

At the height of the revolt Egypt was haemorrhaging more than $300 million a day, according to a report earlier this month from Credit Agricole, which lowered a growth forecast for 2011 from 5.3 percent to 3.7 per cent.

The military council has dissolved parliament and suspended the constitution that underpinned Mubarak’s autocratic rule and strongly favoured his National Democratic Party (NDP).

The dissolved parliament was seen as illegitimate after elections last year, marred by allegations of fraud, gave the NDP an overwhelming majority. The protesters also called for the lifting of a 20-year-old emergency law that allowed Mubarak’s regime to detain suspects indefinitely without formal charges, a call backed by the United States.

Meanwhile, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said today it will form a political party in the wake of the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, which banned but broadly tolerated the Islamist opposition group.

“The Muslim Brotherhood believes in the freedom to form parties and is therefore determined to have its own political party,” Mohammed Mursi, a member of the group’s political bureau, said in a statement.

“All that prevented the group from achieving this demand was the law on parties, which essentially prevented the establishment of any parties without the agreement of (Mubarak’s) National Democratic Party,” he added.

The country’s most powerful organised opposition group ran candidates as independents under the slogan “Islam is the solution” in 2005 parliamentary elections, winning around 20 percent of seats in the legislative body. (AFP)