Egypt’s emerging leaders after Morsi’s overthrow

CAIRO — Contours are slowly emerging of Egypt’s new leadership, even though an initial announcement that a chief rival of deposed President Mohammed Morsi was named as interim prime minister was taken back later on Saturday.

Hours after the main opposition grouping said interim President Adly Mansour would swear in Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei as premier, a spokesman for Mansour said consultations on the post were still ongoing.

Here is a look at the top three figures today in Egypt.

—INTERIM PRESIDENT: Adly Mansour, 67, a judge.

Mansour emerged from near-obscurity when he became head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, two days before Egypt’s military chief announced Wednesday that Morsi had been deposed and was to be replaced by the chief justice.

Mansour’s career in the judiciary took a prominent turn in 1984, when he became a judge on the state council and then its vice president. In 1992, he was appointed vice president to the Supreme Constitutional Court. He became chief justice following his predecessor’s retirement on June 30.

He was sworn in as Egypt’s president on Thursday.

—ARMY CHIEF: Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, 58, also the defense minister.

El-Sissi stepped onto the center stage of Egyptian politics when the military on Monday gave Morsi a 48-hour ultimatum to resolve his differences with the opposition after millions took to the streets on June 30 to demand the Islamist leader leave power. On Wednesday, el-Sissi announced Morsi’s removal.

A graduate of the Egyptian military academy and the U.S. Army War College, el-Sissi was appointed commander in chief of the Egyptian armed forces in August 2012, replacing Field Marshall Mohammed Hussein Tantawi who was ordered into retirement by Morsi.

—INTERIM PRIME MINISTER: After an initial announcement that Mohammed ElBaradei, 71, a former director of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was named interim prime minister, a Mansour spokesman, Ahmed el-Musalamani, said that appointment was still being discussed.

Another senior official, Munir Fakhry Abdelnur, told The Associated Press that the reversal came after the ultraconservative Salafi el-Nour party objected to ElBaradei’s appointment.

With a long career on the international scene, ElBaradei first served as an Egyptian diplomat to the United Nations and later as an aide to Egypt’s foreign minister. He was the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency for nearly 12 years. He and the IAEA shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

After popular protests toppled longtime Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, ElBaradei emerged as a prominent democracy advocate and later as an opposition leader in the National Salvation Front. After a series of widely criticized moves by Morsi, ElBaradei said members of the dominant Muslim Brotherhood lived “in a delusion” for thinking they could manage the country on their own.