Tomorrow, Saturday, a committee formed of the heads of political parties in Egypt will convene to propose names from among which Parliament would elect the
Tomorrow, Saturday, a committee formed of the heads of political parties in Egypt will convene to propose names from among which Parliament would elect the constituent assembly that will be tasked with writing Egypt’s post-Revolution constitution. The names will be proposed according to the proportions set by the representatives of 22 parties and the head of the ruling military council during their meeting yesterday.
Next Tuesday, Parliament will choose the members of the 100-member constituent assembly from among the list drawn by the committee.
After weeks of deadlock, representatives of the political parties yesterday agreed to a method according to which the constituent assembly members should be selected. The agreement came after the military council set a 48-hour deadline on Tuesday, threatening to propose an arrangement themselves if a deal was not reached.
The constituent assembly will include politicians from across the spectrum of Egypt’s political arena, members of the armed forces, the police, the judiciary and trade unions, as well as Muslim and Coptic Christian religious leaders.
Out of the assembly’s 100 seats, 39 will be allocated to representatives of parties in the lower house of parliament, the People’s Assembly, which is dominated by Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and the Salafi Nur party. The 39 seats will be divided among the PA parties according to the proportion of seats they occupy in the PA.
Six seats will go to judges, nine to law experts, seven to worker and peasant unions, and six to professional syndicate representatives. One seat each will be allocated to the armed forces, police and the justice minister.
Twenty-one public figures chosen at the Tuesday meeting will be appointed.
Al-Azhar, the topmost Islamic institution in Egypt, will be allocated five seats; and the Coptic Orthodox, Catholic and Evangelical churches in Egypt will get four.
In yesterday’s meeting, it was decided that 50 per cent of the members of the constituent assembly would be Islamist, that is, belonging to Islamic groups or parties.
It was also decided that any decision by the panel must be endorsed by a two-thirds majority. If this majority is not achieved, 57 per cent vote is needed to pass a proposal.
This is the second time an attempt is made to form a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution for Egypt. The first, in which Islamists held a majority, was suspended by the Cairo Administrative Court on 10 April amid a boycott by liberals, secularists, women, young people and minorities who were under-represented.
WATANI International
8 June 2012