Egyptian voters could go to polls in April as leaders speed up transition

Egypt’s military leadership has called for a swift move to a presidential election, in a sign that the army’s planned transition to civilian rule is being accelerated.

“Field-Marshal Tantawi stressed the need for quick completion of these procedures and their announcement,” Egypt’s state news agency MENA reported yesterday, after the head of the ruling army council met the head of the constitutional court.

An Egyptian election official said nominations for the presidential election race would be accepted from March 10, according to the semi-official Al Ahram media website.

This could lead to a presidential vote as early as April

Thirteen people have died in the violence which erupted in Cairo and Suez after 74 people were killed at a football match, drawing a stinging rebuke of Egypt’s government. The fighting has reduced an area of central Cairo to a rock-strewn battle zone, as angry football fans and young revolutionaries demanding the generals relinquish power clash with riot police armed with batons, tear gas and shotguns.

Some citizens formed lines across streets near the interior ministry yesterday to separate the two sides.

But the fighting flared again, with 1,000 mostly young men hurling stones through the acrid clouds of gas.

Police crowded around protesters close to their lines, raining blows with batons and dragging them away senseless towards the ministry, which was sealed off with concrete blocks laid across roads since Sunday.

“The military council wants this [clashes],” said Ahmed Ibrahim, an activist. “They are happy with it… We had two truces that were broken by the police.”

What began as a protest at the police’s failed handling of security at a football match has now become another broad protest against the army, which some Egyptians accuse of blocking real change in Egypt after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak a year ago.

Many are angry there has not been a deep clear-out in the police force and that officers use the same heavy-handed tactics against protests as in President Mubarak’s era. Graffiti covers walls in Mohamed Mahmoud Street, centre of the latest violence, reading, “Down, down with military rule” and “we want revolutionary law”.

Parliament speaker Mohamed Saad al-Katatni appealed for restraint.

He said: “Civil defence forces are now firing cartridges and tear gas, and I am asking the interior minister to order troops not to disperse protesters using force. I demand that the protesters abide by the law and do not assault buildings.”

In an apparent concession to the army’s critics, the government said late on Sunday that it was preparing to move Mr Mubarak to a Cairo prison hospital from a military hospital.

Protesters have long complained that the generals were sparing their former commander the humiliation of jail by detaining him in a military hospital during his trial over the deaths of protesters during the uprising that removed him.