Egypt: Thousands Protest President Morsy’s Decree

Is it more of the same in Egypt? Thousands of Egyptian protesters gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday, kicking off several days protests against a new constitutional decree by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy, giving him sweeping powers. The president and his backers in the Muslim Brotherhood insist the new measures are only in place to safeguard the process of drafting the country’s new constitution from potential meddling by the judiciary, which is seen as being at odds with Morsy and the Islamists who now dominate Egypt’s Constituent Assembly. The protesters, though, fear the authoritarianism of old creeping back into post-revolution Egypt.