In the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, the opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party clashed with followers of Mr. Morsi, an Islamist, who won Western and regional plaudits only days ago for brokering a cease-fire to halt eight days of lethal exchanges between Israeli forces and militants in the Gaza Strip.
Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, portrayed his decree assuming the new powers as an attempt to fulfill popular demands for justice and protect the transition to a constitutional democracy. He said it was necessary to overcome gridlock and competing interests. But the unexpected breadth of the powers he seized raised immediate fears that he might become a new strongman.
“We are, God willing, moving forward, and no one stands in our way,” Reuters quoted Mr. Morsi as saying on Friday said in a suburban mosque here after Friday prayers.
“I fulfill my duties to please God and the nation and I take decisions after consulting with everyone,” he said. “Victory does not come without a clear plan and this is what I have.”
He spoke as state television reported that his party’s offices in the Suez Canal cities of Suez, Port Said and Ismailia had been burned as his foes rampaged. Thousands of people protesting Mr. Morsi’s power grab gathered in Tahrir Square here — the focal point of protests that, last year, swept away Mr. Mubarak. Elsewhere in the capital, the president’s supporters massed in even larger numbers outside the presidential palace where Mr. Morsi said his aim was “to achieve political, social and economic stability.”
“I am for all Egyptians. I will not be biased against any son of Egypt,” he said on a stage outside the presidential palace, Reuters, reported, adding he was working for social and economic stability. “Opposition in Egypt does not worry me, but it has to be real and strong,” he said.
Sounding defensive at times and employing some of the language favored by his autocratic predecessor, Mr. Morsi justified his power grab as necessary to move Egypt’s revolution forward.
“The people wanted me to be the guardian of these steps in this phase,” he said, reminding his audience that he was freely elected after a contest “that the whole world has witnessed.”
“I don’t like, and don’t want — and there is no need — to use exceptional measures,” he said. “But those who are trying to gnaw the bones of the nation,” he added, “must be held accountable.”
News reports said clashes spread from Alexandria to the southern city of Assyut. But the severity of the clashes was not immediately clear.
Mr. Morsi’s new powers prompted one prominent adversary, Mohamed ElBaradei, to say on Twitter: “Morsi today usurped all state powers & appointed himself Egypt’s new pharaoh.”
“An absolute presidential tyranny,” Amr Hamzawy, a liberal member of the dissolved Parliament and prominent political scientist, wrote in an online commentary. “Egypt is facing a horrifying coup against legitimacy and the rule of law and a complete assassination of the democratic transition.”
Mr. Morsi issued the decree on Thursday at a high point in his five-month-old presidency, when he was basking in praise from the White House and around the world for his central role in negotiating a cease-fire that the previous night had stopped the fighting in the Gaza Strip.
But his political opponents immediately called for demonstrations on Friday to protest his new powers. “Passing a revolutionary demand within a package of autocratic decisions is a setback for the revolution,” Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a more liberal former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and a former presidential candidate, wrote online. And the chief of the Supreme Constitutional Court indicated that it did not accept the decree.
In Washington on Thursday, the State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, released a statement saying: “The decisions and declarations announced on November 22 raise concerns form many Egyptians and the international community,” and noting that “one of the aspirations of the revolution was to ensure that power would not be overly concentrated in that hands of any one person or institution.” The statement called for resolution “through democratic dialogue.”
David D. Kirkpatrick and Kareem Fahim reported from Cairo and Alan Cowell from Paris. Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.
