Egypt's Islamist president replaces defense minister, Chief of Staff, cancels military order aiming to limit presidential powers

(JPost) Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy fired defense minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi and chief of staff Gen. Sami Enan on Sunday.

A spokesman for the Islamist president announced on television that the ejection of top military figures associated with the old regime represented the completion of the Egyptian revolution.

The spokesman added that a constitutional declaration passed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which forbade the president making military appointments, was canceled.

The council seized power after Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, and dissolved Egypt’s lower house of parliament after it came under the control of Islamist representatives through elections.

Tantawi and Enan were given honorary roles as advisers, the spokesman said, before announcing that the heads of the Egyptian Air Force, air defense system, and Navy had also been ejected from their posts.

Although their replacements are expected to be secular security figures like their predecessors, the move is widely seen as a signal by the Muslim Brotherhood that power is now firmly concentrated in the hands of the Islamist civilian government.

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