Egypt's government is open to lifting state of emergency if situation improves Presidential aide of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has ruled out dismissal of the current government led by Hisham Kandil, and replacing it with a "national salvation" government ,saying that setting up a new government "would take a long time while parliamentary election are expected to be held within months."
In a press conference held in the presidential palace in Cairo, Bakinam Sharkawi stressed that the invitation to opposition parties and groups to join the "national dialogue" sessions remains open, despite their rejection of Morsi's call to join Monday's session.
"We will keep in touch with all the political forces, even those who refused to attend yesterday's session," Sharkawi told reporters.
Her comments were reiterated by another presidential aide, Ayman Ali, who said that the president will keep trying to reach "a national alignment" with the Salvation Front - a major coalition of the opposition representing liberal and leftist parties.
Speaking about the recent unrest in Egypt's Suez Canal cities, Ali said that President Morsi is holding regular meetings with the military and security leaders to assess the security developments in these cities, adding that the state of emergency imposed on these cities may be lifted sooner than the initial 30-day period if there is a level of stability.
"Imposing state of emergency was not the ideal solution, it was a very tough decision but the president had to take," said Ali.
Meanwhile, representatives of the Independent Current, an alliance of 30 opposition parties, arrived in Suez, Port Said and Ismailiya [the cities in which emergency and night curfew are imposed] on Tuesday, to show solidarity with people of those cities "and support their right to protest peacefully against the government's policies."
In a statement, the Current called on President Morsi to annul his latest decisions of imposing a night curfew and state of emergency in these cities, "as such decision will have a bad affect on people's life."
The convoy that visited the three cities included Ahmed Fadali [chairman of the al-Salam Party], Nabil Zaki [key figure in the Tagamou Party], Effat Sadat [chairman of the National Egyptian Party] and Naguib Gabriel [human rights activist].