viagra no prescription

Egypt’s first post-Mubarak constitution, whose drawing process is set to begin in April, will allow the country’s top leadership to relinquish power honourably and with their dignity intact as it limits the presidential tenure to only two terms of four years each, a top official in the Egyptian military-backed interim government has said. This means that a democratically elected president will constitutionally be allowed to serve for a maximum of eight years – if he or she manages to get elected again after serving the first four years.

“The constitution is expected to limit the presidential term to two terms of four years each,” said Egypt’s Foreign Minister, Mohamed Kamel Amr in Nairobi while on a tour of the nine countries that share linkage with the Nile River, the Arab nation’seconomic pillar. An official at Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign affairs told viagra no prescription that Amr was on a mission to reinvigorate relations between Egypt and the Nile basin countries, following the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak early last year.

Amr, who was in Russia tackling trade talks the week before, said that the parliamentary polls for the 454-member lower house had already taken place and resulted in the election of 450 members. Once the Upper House elections are complete, the country will come up with a national committee whose mandate will be to draw up the North African country’s new constitution.

Once the new constitution is in place, Egypt will then hold the presidential polls denoting the end of the transition from military rule to civilian rule, he added. However, the transition to complete civilian rule - even if in the long run will appear as so - is highly unlikely, international media reports insinuate.

viagra no prescription

Recently, concerns were raised when it was announced that the proposals in the new constitution allowed military generals to appoint up to 80 percent of the constitutional committee. This did not auger well with the masses who again took to the streets in protest.  The rancour between the protestors and the Egyptian military, once a revered institution before Mubarak’s ouster, has been crystallising by the day amidst a revolution that began on Tuesday, 25 January 2011 and still continues to date.

After the upheaval of one of Africa’s longest serving ruler, the Supreme Council of the Armed forces (SCAF) – a body of senior army men, took over Egypt’s reigns and ordered the prosecution of Mubarak and his sons. The military government, headed by the effective head of state, Mohamed Tantawi, was meant to rule for six months – with a suspended constitution and two dissolved parliaments - until elections were held.

But it is now close to a year of political upheaval, and protests have continued amidst concerns about how long, if not indefinitely, the army will continue presiding over Egypt.

According to New York-based Human Rights Watch, over 500 protestors or bystanders had been injured since December 16, and 12 of them have been killed. The number could have gone a notch higher. Once hailed by activists and welcomed in equal measure by the international community, the army is now regarded as an extension of Mubarak’s repressive rule. Now frail, bedridden and disgraced, Mubarak, 83, continues – since August - to undergo trial on charges of corruption and complicity in the killing of hundreds of protestors.

viagra no prescription

Even as the frayed nation conducted its first round of parliamentary elections early last month, there were still protestors in the streets in their hundreds of thousands, further deepening the standoff between demonstrators and SCAF who are yet to find a way out of a situation that is fast, if not already, washing away their once unquestionable reputation.

Recently Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mohamed ElBadarei – a fresh, uncorrupted and internationally respected voice who was seen as the likely candidate to propel the country toward democratic reforms and replace deposed Mubarak’s corrupt legacy – quit the race for the Egyptian presidency. He cited the military’s persistent and omnipresent grip on power as the reason for pulling out.

The situation in Egypt is one of many anti-government protests spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

The protests, most of them instigated by social media and otherwise known as the Arab Spring, started in December 2010 in a Tunisian town when a desperate 26-year old fruit vendor set himself on fire after he was publicly humiliated by authorities reprimanding him for conducting unlicensed business. He suffered full-body burns and died after wards. The act unleashed pent-up anger and frustrations among his impoverished compatriots, who staged protests that spread countrywide. In less than a month, Tunisia’s longtime president Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia after he was forced out of power.

Ben Ali’s removal reverberated across the Arab World. And within days, Egyptians took to the streets. After 18 days, long-serving Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was forced out of power. Protests also began in Bahrain, but they were suppressed. Libya then took center stage and what started as common protests developed into a full-fledged civil war with the opposition, resulting in the death of tyrant Muammar Gaddafi and the fall of his government.

Meanwhile Yemen’s authoritarian president is supposed to step down as part of a US-backed effort to end the country’s political standoff. And Syria continues to revolt as President Bashar Assad stays put even as human rights watchdogs report that thousands of anti-government protestors have been killed. Minor anti-government protests have been reported in Algeria, Iraq, Morocco, Jordan, Oman, on the Israeli borders and Lebanon.

Regional groups such as the Arab League have been trying to act as mediators in the revolutions but so far their voice has seemingly been weak and not authoritarian enough with some of their representatives being attacked by government forces – as is the case in Syria. Civil rights groups say the Arab Spring protests, whose major slogan – in Arabic - has been “the people want to bring down the regime,” were and still are the biggest challenge to authoritarian governments since the fall of the Soviet Union.

By RONALD BERA and JOANNA MWANGI