Opposition leaders earlier rejected Mr Morsi’s call for talks, putting their weight instead behind rallies which converged on the palace from all across Cairo attacking his plans for a constitutional referendum next weekend.
The protesters were held up by a line of the Republican Guard, but as numbers grew it gave way, with swarms of demonstrators running in front of the gates and climbing on top of armoured personnel carriers and tanks. In a long-awaited televised speech to the nation on Thursday night, Mr Morsi refused to lift the declaration under which he put his powers beyond the scrutiny of judges and insisted the referendum on a new, Islamist-tinged constitution would not be postponed. He called for a meeting with the opposition on Saturday, but his failure to offer compromises in advance, and the increasingly militant tone of Brotherhood statements, infuriated the mainly liberal and secular opposition. “We are against dialogue based on a policy of arm-twisting and imposing a fait accompli,” said Mohammed ElBaradei, the former United Nations Atomic Energy chief who is now the opposition’s figurehead.
One of his allies in the opposition National Salvation Front, defeated presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi, went further, calling on Mr Morsi not only to rescind his declaration but to step down. His fiery speech in Tahrir Square was met with chants of “The people want the downfall of the regime,” the keynote phrase of last year’s revolution against President Hosni Mubarak.
Such chants have angered the Muslim Brotherhood, who claim that the opposition is backed by elements of the old regime and is trying to incite a counter-coup against Egypt’s first ever democratically elected president. A number of offices of the Brotherhood and its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, have been attacked and in some cases burned in the past week. The national headquarters on the outskirts of Cairo was looted on Thursday night after Mr Morsi spoke. The Brotherhood held a funeral at Al-Azhar mosque for two of those killed in clashes outside the presidential palace on Wednesday evening, when thousands of Brotherhood and opposition supporters fought, throwing stones and firing pellet guns at each other. The crowd at the mosque and speakers accused the opposition of being murderers, traitors and “hash-smokers”, a reference to the drugs and alcohol they allege the opposition on Wednesday were using.
Tens of thousands storm barricades at Egypt’s presidential palace
