President-elect Mohammed Morsi speaks to newspaper editors in Cairo, Egypt, Thursday, June 28, 2012. (Photo: AP)
President-elect Mohamed Morsi will be sworn into office before the High Constitutional Court on Saturday, the Egyptian presidency announced in an official statement Thursday night.
The president is also expected to address the nation from Cairo University on Saturday after the swearing ceremony.
The announcement comes after five days of intense speculation over where the ceremony would take place.
Egypt's revolutionary forces have already demanded that Morsi take the oath of office before parliament, so as not to acknowledge a recent SCAF-issued 'constitutional addendum' that sorely limits the powers of the presidency.
According to the Constitutional Declaration issued by the SCAF on 30 March 2011 in the wake of last year's revolution, Egypt's president-elect should be sworn in before parliament. But a ruling by Egypt's High Constitutional Court earlier this month led to the dissolution of the People’s Assembly, the lower house of Egypt's parliament.
The 'constitutional addendum' issued earlier this month, meanwhile, states that the president-elect should be sworn into office before the High Constitutional Court.
Ikhwan Online, the oficial website of the Muslim Brotherhood, announced earlier Thursday evening that president-elect Mohamed Morsi will deliver a speech to the nation from Tahrir Square, the birthplace of the Egyptian revolution, at Friday's planned mass protest after he performs the noon prayers at Al-Azhar mosque.
Essam El-Erian, vice-president of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), announced that the Islamist group would participate in Friday's million-man protest which is organised under the slogan "Handover Power" to demand a reversal for the ruling military council's 15 June decision to disband parliament and the annulment of the SCAF-issued addendum which limits presidential powers.
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