The political arena in Egypt appeared to have been thrown into disarray in the wake of the Thursday rulings by the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC)
The political arena in Egypt appeared to have been thrown into disarray in the wake of the Thursday rulings by the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC).
The SCC issued two key rulings: the first ruled that the elections which brought in the People’s Assembly (PA), the lower house of Egypt’s Parliament, were unconstitutional; meaning the assembly in its entirety should be dissolved.
Islamists who, represented by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and the Salafi al-Nur Party, had a sweeping majority in the PA harshly criticised the ruling and threatened they would hold a million-person demonstration in Tahrir on Friday.
The second decreed that what has come to be known as the political disenfranchisement law is unconstitutional. The law, which was passed last month, is concerned with exercising political rights, and bars anyone who had held a leading post under the pre-revolution regime from running for public office. The law was declared unconstitutional for imposing penalties on alleged crimes committed before the passage of the law; for deeming those who worked under the previous regime guilty of crimes that warrant penalty without any court judgement, given that courts of law alone are authorised to pronounce an individual guilty and to accordingly impose a penalty; and for violating equal opportunity.
The disenfranchisement law would have disqualified Ahmed Shafik, a liberal and the last premier under Mubarak, from running for president of Egypt. Shafik, who won 23.6 per cent of the vote, came second to the FJP’s Mohamed Mursi who gained 24.7 per cent of the vote in the first round of the elections.
The two finalists are now running for the presidency.
Several questions have surfaced as a result of the first ruling. Major among them is whether or not the dissolution of the PA would automatically invalidate the constituent assembly the PA had voted in last Tuesday, and which had included a 67 per cent majority Islamist members. The assembly came under fire from the secularists, and has been urgently contested in court.
Two decisions taken by the ruling Military Council on Wednesday were seen by observers to have been linked to anticipated unrest. The first allows military police and intelligence officers to arrest civilians suspected of a range of offences, including those deemed “harmful to the government”, destruction of property, obstructing traffic, and resisting orders. Several of these provisions would allow the military to detain demonstrators.
The second decision was to close the Rafah crossing on the Gaza border for maintenance and repair works. Egypt had facilitated the opening of the Rafah crossing following the 25 January 2011 Revolution.
WATANI International
17 June 2012