A military court mistakenly sentences a toddler to life in prison. A police officer shoots a driver dead on a busy Cairo street. A judge sends a writer to jail over salacious scenes in a novel.

As a result of those headlines and others, Egypt’s judiciary and security forces are facing a sudden increase in public anger over rights abuses. Calls for reform have moved from the street to the media and even to the floor of the Egyptian parliament, a body usually regarded as little more than a rubber-stamp appendage of the regime.

Discontent with the police and judicial system also cropped up this week in Egypt’s mainstream news media, including critical words from voices normally sympathetic to the state and to the regime of President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi. The increased scrutiny, particularly of the police, has played out in the pages of Egypt’s newspapers, and on Feb. 12, thousands of doctors held a rare demonstration over the beating and arrest of two physicians.

The uproar poses a serious challenge for Sisi a former military chief who came to power following an army coup in July 2013. Sisi has maintained a tight grip on the government and presided over an increasingly authoritarian state. But he is now grappling with the problem of managing vast state institutions—including the judiciary—that maintain a degree of autonomy even from a very powerful executive.

Sisi is evidently feeling some of the pressure, responding to recent criticism in an emotional televised speech on Wednesday. “No one should abuse my patience and good manners to bring down the state,” he said in a rambling 90-minute address in Cairo. “I swear by God that anyone who comes near it, I will remove him from the face of the Earth. I am telling you this as the whole of Egypt is listening. What do you think you’re doing? Who are you?” he said, according to the Associated Press.

The judiciary and security forces have been on the leading edge of a violent crackdown on critics of the state since the military takeover that ousted President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in July 2013. Since then, the authorities have detained tens of thousands of people—activists, students, and bystanders—in a security campaign intended to quell the years of unrest that followed the 2011 uprising that toppled president Hosni Mubarak.

Yet several recent incidents have managed to enrage even cynical Egyptians, underscoring the lack of accountability for the actions of the judges, prosecutors and security officials. On Feb. 18 a police sergeant shot a driver in the head, killing him, following an argument, according to prosecutors. The officer was forced to flee the scene of the killing on the street in the working class district of Darb al-Ahmar after a crowd of outraged residents rose up against him.

The murder prompted renewed calls for reform of the Interior Ministry following years in which police have expanded their lethal use of force. According to the respected Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence—which is itself facing closure by state authorities—474 peopledied at the hands of the security forces in 2015.

Two days later, an appeals court sentenced novelist Ahmed Naji to two years in prison for the crime of “violating public modesty” over a published excerpt of a novel that depicted sex and drug use among Cairo’s disaffected young people. Naji’s sentencing escalated the media backlash, with some figures holding Sisi himself responsible for the actions of the court. In a column published after the ruling, the influential pundit Ibrahim Eissa—a dissident under Mubarak who backed the military’s 2013 removal of Morsi—accused Sisi of running a “theocracy.” That’s an inflammatory charge—Sisi justified the military’s overthrow of the Islamist-led government of Morsi in part over fears that the Brotherhood would impose just such a theocracy.

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