Egypt's Emerging Leaders After Morsi's Overthrow

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sunday, July 7, 2013

A look at some of the top figures emerging in Egypt after the military removed President Mohammed Morsi:

—Interim President Adly Mansour, 67, a judge:

Mansour emerged from near-obscurity when he became head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, two days before Egypt's military chief announced that Morsi had been deposed and was to be replaced by the chief justice.

Mansour's career in the judiciary took a prominent turn in 1984, when he became a judge on the state council and then its vice president. In 1992, he was appointed vice president to the Supreme Constitutional Court. He became chief justice following his predecessor's retirement on June 30.

He was sworn in as Egypt's president on Thursday.

—Army chief and Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, 58, also the defense minister:

El-Sissi stepped onto the center stage of Egyptian politics when the military on Monday gave Morsi a 48-hour ultimatum to resolve his differences with the opposition after millions took to the streets on June 30 to demand the Islamist leader leave power. On Wednesday, el-Sissi announced Morsi's removal.

A graduate of the Egyptian military academy and the U.S. Army War College, el-Sissi was appointed commander in chief of the Egyptian armed forces in August 2012, replacing Field Marshall Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, who was ordered into retirement by Morsi.

—Ziad Bahaa-Eldin of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party:

Bahaa-Eldin has been widely tipped as the consensus candidate to become prime minister for the transitional government. Comparatively young for an Egyptian politician at 48, he is a widely respected Western-educated lawyer with a degree from the London School of Economics who set up the government's financial regulatory body overseeing capital markets after heading the business-friendly investment agency.

While he did work in the government of deposed President Hosni Mubarak, he was never seen as a real member of the regime. He quickly sided with the 2011 uprising and joined one of the new political parties formed after Mubarak's ouster, a left-of-center party that believes in a market economy that takes into account the needs of the workers. He won a seat in the first parliament after Mubarak's fall, representing the southern governorate of Assuit.

On Thursday he called for building a new system based on inclusiveness and respect for law and "does not use the weapons of our rivals in treating them."

—Mohammed ElBaradei, former director of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency:

Originally pegged to be prime minister, the 71-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate was opposed by conservatives and may now become vice president in the interim government.

With a long career on the international scene, ElBaradei served as an Egyptian diplomat to the United Nations and later as an aide to Egypt's foreign minister. He was the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency for nearly 12 years. He and the IAEA shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

After popular protests toppled Mubarak in February 2011, ElBaradei emerged as a democracy advocate and later as an opposition leader in the National Salvation Front. After a series of widely criticized moves by Morsi, ElBaradei said members of the dominant Muslim Brotherhood lived "in a delusion" for thinking they could manage the country on their own.