The Egyptian Military's Latest Power Grab Gets Rebuffed by Islamists

The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most powerful political group after its parliamentary elections, is rebuffing the military's attempts to control how the nation's constitution is written, as The New York Times reports.

The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most powerful political group after its parliamentary elections, is rebuffing the military's attempts to control how the nation's constitution is written, as The New York Times reports. Egypt's military, in control of the country after Mubarak's ouster, got worried about how much control the Islamist Freedom and Justice Party of the Muslim Brotherhood would try to assert over Egypt's historical big-budget military, traditional well-funded with U.S. dollars making it the largest in Africa, after it won big in the nation's first round of elections. First, in November, it tried to insist that that the constitution have a provision prohibiting civilian oversight of the military budget. When the Brotherhood and liberal Egyptian groups joined together to protest the move, the military took a different turn this month. "The elected parliament will have only partial say in drafting the new constitution, [military council's General Mokhtar] al-Mulla said, and the military would retain some control over the process," according to Time. Now Islamists say they are withdrawing from that advisory council formed by the military to draft the constitution, with a Brotherhood rep calling the move "a derogation of the legislative institution," according to The Times. Egyptians took to the streets when the military tried to make the same sorts of assertion of power almost a month ago, forcing the country's entire cabinet to resign.