Protesters in Tahrir reacted negatively to interim Prime Minister Essam Sharaf’s short speech last night in which he promised a cabinet reshuffle within a week and assured that he would replace some governors before the end of the month.
Hundreds of protesters gathered around one of the three speakers in the square to listen to his speech. They clapped when Sharaf said that he asked the Supreme Judiciary Council, Egypt’s highest judiciary body, for swift and public trials of scores of police officers suspected of killing approximately 900 protesters during last winter’s 18-day uprising.
That wasn’t enough to satisfy protesters, though. After Sharaf finished his short speech, protesters chanted for him to leave.
Ramy Kamel, member of the Justice and Freedom movement, said people in the square were not satisfied with the speech.
“Sharaf’s speeches don’t differ from Mubarak’s speeches,” Kamel told the crowd of hundreds of protesters.“The Egyptian judiciary should first embrace a process of purging its corrupt elements. We don’t trust those judges who were loyal to Mubarak. They should be sacked before overseeing the trials [of the former regime’s figures],” Kamel said.
He added that the attorney general “has piles of corruption files in his office but he doesn’t dare to investigate those cases because he is a Mubarak loyalist.”
At this point protesters chanted, “Down with the attorney general.”
Hesham el-Bastawisi, the vice president of the Court of Cassation and a presidential candidate, was among those in Tahrir who expressed their dissatisfaction with Sharaf’s speech.
“He didn’t say anything. People need action – I mean immediate actions,” Bastawisi told Al-Masry Al-Youm as a crowd of supporters besieged him.
Protesters also chanted anti-police slogans such as: “The police are thugs.”“On 28 and 29 June, we saw the same face of the police,” Sayed Ali, a student, said of the clashes between protesters and security forces in Tahrir Square that left hundreds injured. “[They are] a bunch of thugs who are using excessive force against peaceful protesters.”
