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By Wang Zhaokun Leaders of Egypt's ruling Supreme Military Council issued a new communique Monday calling on labor leaders to stop strikes and protests, in an effort to get Egyptians to return to work, days after President Hosni Mubarak was forced from office. The call to end strikes came after the military council issued a statement to suspend Egypt's constitution and dissolve the Parliament, pledging to turn over power in the coming months to a democratically elected government. Separately, Egypt's ambassador to the US said yesterday on NBC's "Today" show that Mubarak may be in "bad health," providing the first word on the state of the 82-year-old leader since he was ousted Friday, the AP reported. Defying the military's call, workers at banks forced officials to make yesterday an unscheduled bank holiday, and there were also reports of protests, sit-ins and strikes at many State-owned institutions. Yin Gang, a senior Middle East analyst at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that the reported plan to ban strikes shows that the military government is keen on getting Egypt back on its feet so as to gain more support from the public over the legitimacy of their governance. "But faced with both interior and exterior pressure to conduct more reform, it is unlikely that the military will introduce stricter rules restraining people's rights," Yin said. Meanwhile, Egyptian troops and military police yesterday cleared the last demonstrators from Tahrir Square, which was the heart of the 18-day demonstration. However, leaders of the opposition have warned that the military is due to face the same protests that led to the end of Mubarak's 30-year rule if it fails to meet demands. Protest organizers are calling for a major "Victory March" across Egypt on Friday. The opposition has demanded political prisoners be released, the state of emergency be lifted and the military courts abolished. "The two big questions now are who is going to be on the constitutional committee to redraft (the constitution), and are there any guarantees that what they come up with is then going to be deemed the way ahead," Rosemary Hollis, a professor of Middle East policy studies at City University London, told Reuters. Yin added, "If the opposition insists on raising demands that are deemed by the military as unlikely to be met, and thereby hurt their interests, including how to investigate the casualties during the demonstration and bring all of those responsible to justice, it is likely that the situation in Egypt could become more strained and complicated." Agencies contributed to this story |
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