Protesters in Cairo’s Mohamed Mahmoud Street painting a mural of martyred Coptic activist Mina Daniel (Pic: Hossam el-Hamalawy)

Today all the masks fell from Mohamed Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood organisation, who trade in revolution and for whom the revolution is nothing but a means to reach the seat of power. They and the remnants of the old regime are two sides of the same coin, which is tyranny and enmity towards the people.

Mursi has issued a constitutional declaration in the name of the revolution. It appears on the surface to show compassion, but in reality it promises torment.

He has started to open investigations into the murder of revolutionaries, dozens of whom fell at Maspero, in Mohamed Mahmoud Street and outside the Cabinet Offices. The Muslim Brotherhood had previously ignored them.

He announced the removal of the attorney general, whose sacking we have been demanding since the beginning of the revolution since he is a part of the old regime. This is the same regime whose leadership Mursi has largely preserved, such as the current interior minister, or the businessmen who accompany Mursi on his plane when he travels abroad.

The declaration then moved on to its real object: to give immunity to the president’s decisions until the election of a new parliament. This will also preserve the Shura Council [the upper house of Egypt’s parliament] and the farcical Constituent Assembly, which has seen a large number of its members resign in recent days.

This assembly does not represent the Egyptian masses. It was the result of a deal in a hotel room between the Brotherhood, the Salafists and the parties of the old era. Its members aren’t concerned with economic and social rights. They are more interested in the age of marriage for girls, in abolishing the divorce law—and in expanding the powers of the president.

The declaration also gives Mursi the right to take any decisions necessary in the face of threats to the country, national security, the revolution or national unity.

Threat

We say to Mursi: you and your organisation are the real threat to the revolution, as you embrace Mubarak’s businessmen, run panting after loans from the IMF, trade in religion, threaten national unity and sell the revolution.

The words “social justice” are not even in your dictionary. You’ve forgotten the minimum and maximum wage. You’ve raised prices and left the poor eating mud while they still need a bottle of oil and kilo of meat before the elections.

We will not accept a new pharaoh. You will not succeed in stabilising your tottering government which crushed dozens of children with neglect, killed and injured hundreds of young people with bullets and tear gas, and detained hundreds after severe beatings and torture from the dogs of the interior ministry.

But we will not accept remnants of the old regime returning to the revolutionary scene under the pretext that “we are all against the Brotherhood”. We will not work with anyone who worked hand in glove with the deposed dictator, because these people participated for many years in looting and killing the best sons and daughters of the people. We call on our comrades in the revolutionary march to step back from this game of shuffling the decks of cards.

The Revolutionary Socialists call on the revolutionary people to save the revolution which has been stolen by an alliance between the Brotherhood and the remnants of Mubarak’s regime. We call on people to come out into the streets with the slogans: bread, freedom, social justice.

We demand:

the cancellation of the supplementary constitutional declaration which entrenches tyranny and autocracy

the formation of a new Constituent Assembly which represents all sections of society, including workers, peasants, civil servants, professionals, women, Copts, Nubians, the people of Sinai and Upper Egypt, fishermen and others

the resignation of Qandil’s failed government and the formation of a revolutionary coalition government to take office until the completion of the new constitution and the election of a new parliament

serious steps towards achieving of social justice, such as: implementing a minimum wage of 1,500 Egpytian pounds a month [£150] and a maximum wage; seizing the assets of corrupt companies and Mubarak’s businessmen for the benefit of the people; imposing progressive income taxes; renationalising companies that were sold in corrupt deals and cancelling the privatisation programme

All power and wealth to the people!

Statement published by Egypt’s Revolutionary Socialists on 22 November. Thanks to Anne Alexander for this translation. The original Arabic is online at the Revolutionary Socialists’ website revsoc.me