Military Coup is what happened in Egypt.

I am not sure, but from what I understand the constitution had a succession plan that called for the head of parliament to take over in case the President steps down. Instead the military has suspended the government and the rules that define the it and has placed the country under control of the High Military Council.

The military has much to lose in the transition, these officers and analysts say. Over the years, one-man rule eviscerated Egypt’s civilian institutions, creating a vacuum at the highest levels of government that the military willingly filled. “There aren’t any civilian institutions to fall back on,” said Michael Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation who has written about the Egyptian military. “It’s an open question how much power the military has, and they might not even know themselves.”

The beneficiary of nearly $40 billion in American aid over the last 30 years, the Egyptian military has turned into a behemoth that controls not only security and a burgeoning defense industry, but has also branched into civilian businesses like road and housing construction, consumer goods and resort management.

via Succession Gives Army a Stiff Test in Egypt – NYTimes.com.

The military may be the most trusted government authority, but that may not mean they are trustworthy. They were participants in Mubarak’s autocratic regime for better (filling in civilian services) and for mostly worse (military trials and torture for civilians) and their splinter with Mubarak was his plan to transfer power to his son Gamal.

Mubarak is gone. His regime is over. The paternalistic autocracy is not.