The petition will be presented on June 30 to the Supreme Court. If accepted there will be early presidential elections. The Muslim Brotherhood fear the unexpected success of the initiative and organize demonstrations and a counter-petition in favor of the president. Danger of possible clashes.

Cairo (AsiaNews) - The liberal secular "Rebel" group has reached the threshold of 15 million signatures to impeach the government of Mohamed Morsi. This was announced yesterday by Mahmoud Badr, co-founder of the initiative, at the conference for the launch of the "Rebels Week", a week of demonstrations against the government of the Muslim Brotherhood that will end on June 30. Meanwhile, Morsi supporters have launched a counter-campaign stating that they have already collected ten million signatures in support of the President, yesterday afternoon thousands of people gathered at the end of Friday prayers, expressing solidarity with the head of state. They call for the rebels to "respect the people's will" and announce other peaceful sit-in protests in various Egyptian cities. This is why the police and army have sounded the alarm about possible clashes between protesters from opposing factions.

Launched in mid-May, 'The Rebel' campaign has gathered more and more support among Egyptians. For over a month young people have traveled all over the country door to door collecting the necessary signatures for the petition of no confidence, which if upheld by the Supreme Court could lead to early presidential elections.

Young people have also asked the UN to act as an impartial guarantor, to verify the authenticity of the material presented. To sign up, each person had to write their ID number next to their signature and mark their fingerprint.

At the time the initiative has collected more signatures than the 13.2 million votes obtained by President Morsi in the 2012 elections. According to analysts, the anti-Islamic sentiment has grown rapidly since January 2013 because of the increasing Islamization of politics, which has seen members of the Muslim Brotherhood take control over non-elective institutions, from the judiciary to the local government officials. In addition, the heavy economic recession and youth unemployment are still far from being resolved despite the proclamations of the Islamist establishment.

 

• egypt
• mohamad
• morsi
• election
• vote
• rebels
• petition
• supreme
• court
• muslim
• brotherhood
• islamist
• secular