Egypt's president-elect, the Islamist Mohamed Morsi, tries to earn points as a moderate by picking a Christian and a woman to serve as vice presidents.

REUTERS/Middle East News Agency

n Sunday, Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi ousted the country's top two military chiefs — Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, the defense minister and top military chief, and his deputy, army chief of staff Sami Anan — in what is seen as a bold move to wrest power from the armed forces, and isolate key holdovers from imprisoned former leader Hosni Mubarak's regime. Morsi then appointed Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sissi as defense minister and commander of the armed forces. The president also announced that he had suspended a constitutional amendment the generals had passed on the eve of Morsi's election giving themselves vast powers and weakening the presidency. Morsi ran for the presidency as a candidate for the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group, that now, with these sweeping changes, has "full control of state institutions," says Zeinab Abul-Magd, a history professor at the American University in Cairo.