CAIRO: The death count climbs in the riots outside the Egyptian Ministry of Defense in Abbassiya. Latest estimates average 20 dead, with many more injured and several people missing. The unrest has been simmering since Friday when ultra-conservative Salafists (who have 20 percent of parliamentary seats) staged a sit-in to protest the disqualification of their presidential candidate, Abu Ismail. Abu Ismail had been disqualified from the presidential race because his mother was demonstrated to have had American citizenship—rendering him ineligible under the election guidelines. Abu Ismail proclaims hard-line reforms that are welcomed by his supporters, and that include not only a ban on alcohol, but segregated beaches so that Egyptians would not have to suffer the indignity of seeing Western women wearing bikinis in public. Much of the problem in the Abbassiya neighborhood of Cairo, where the sit-in is taking place, was exacerbated when ‘beltegia' (a sort of plain-clothed goon squad) attacked the demonstrators—this, a common tactic of the Mubarak regime. There were reports of live ammunition fire during the street fighting, which took place with rocks, make-shift swords and Molotov cocktails. Egypt's presidential elections are scheduled for May 23 and 24, with a run-off, if needed, in mid-June. The Supreme Council of Armed Forces, SCAF, who is the custodial government in the transitional phase since Mubarak stepped down over a year ago, has asserted they will relinquish executive power at the end of June. The SCAF is regarded with much suspicion among the Egyptians in the streets, cafés and bars of Egypt, and this suspicion is what brought the protests to the Ministry of Defense in the first place.
