Protests against military rule cloud Egypt's election

Protesters rallied again in Cairo on Sunday to try to evict Egypt's ruling generals, in a trial of strength that has muddied the run-up to Egypt's first vote since a popular revolt deposed former leader Hosni Mubarak. The parliamentary election that gets under way on Monday and Tuesday is the first step in a transfer to civilian rule, promised by the ruling army council that replaced Mubarak.
The course of transformation in Egypt, the Arab world's most populous nation, will reverberate across a region where a new generation demanding democratic change has risen up against autocratic governments that have ruled for decades.
Some Egyptians yearn for stability after a week of bloodshed that has killed 42 people and wounded more than 2,000, preferring for now to let the generals run a nation whose prolonged political turmoil has thrust the economy deeper into crisis.
But the demonstrators gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square want the council to make way for a civilian interim administration immediately. They reject its promise to complete the handover by July and its choice of 78-year-old Kamal Ganzouri to form the next cabinet.
Activists had called for a mass rally to pile pressure on the generals, and by mid-afternoon there were thousands in the square, hub of the unrest that toppled Mubarak.
Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, head of the council, said the army would ensure security at the polling booths.
"We are at a crossroads. There are only two routes, the success of elections leading Egypt towards safety or facing dangerous hurdles that we in the armed forces, as part of the Egyptian people, will not allow," he declared.
Abdel Moneim Aboul Futuh, an Islamist presidential candidate who opposes military rule, said: "The nation is larger than Field Marshal Tantawi and Lieutenant General Sami Enan and the military council. A government with revolutionary leadership must be formed to meet the demands of Tahrir Square."
State television quoted Tantawi as saying the army's role in the new constitution would be unchanged: to protect the nation.
The generals have received tacit support from Islamist parties eager that nothing should disrupt voting in the first of three rounds of an election in which they expect to do well.
The move fell short of the protesters' demand for the generals to hand all power to a civilian council.
Bassam Sharaf, among protesters outside parliament, said the objection to Ganzouri was not his age, but the policies he pursued as prime minister under Mubarak from 1996 to 1999.
"Two-thirds of the ministers that Ganzouri appointed in his day are now in Tora prison," he said, referring to Mubarak-era officials accused of corruption and other offences who were put on trial after an uprising swept Mubarak from power in February.
Some protesters favour Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the UN nuclear watchdog, who has offered to drop his campaign for the presidency and to lead a government of national unity.
ElBaradei is respected among pro-democracy campaigners and has a high international profile, but many Egyptians view him as out of touch because he spent much of his career abroad.
Mohamed Badie, leader of the once-banned Muslim Brotherhood, which hopes the election will catapult it into a strong place in mainstream politics, offered Ganzouri qualified support, depending on the powers and makeup of his cabinet.