The government named by Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil – the relatively little known former irrigation minister appointed on 24 July by President Muhammad Mursi – has been closely scrutinized for Islamist tendencies, but apart from the housing and education ministries going to members of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, the appointments appeared to be largely technocratic and/or professional. (The foreign and finance ministers are career bureaucrats who retain their positions; the interior ministry goes to a career policeman.)  That may or may not reflect Mr Mursi's need to keep a wary eye on the country's military establishment – the head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Field Marshal Husain Tantawi, retains the defense portfolio – but it was not enough to prevent the head of the leftist Tagammu party, Rifʹat al-Saʹid, from claiming that "this is a government that serves the interests of the Brotherhood." So it looks as if Mr Mursi may have succeeded in putting together a government that is too Islamic for the liberals and probably too technocratic for the Islamists.