The
Brotherhood wins, military
prevails Adam Morrow
CAIRO - The first major confrontation
between Egypt's new Islamist president and its
quasi-ruling military council fought over the
issue of legislative authority appears to have
been won by the generals."The Muslim Brotherhood
and its allies may have swept last year's
parliamentary polls, but lawmaking power remains
in the hands of the military," Magdi Sherif,
political analyst and head of the Guardians of the
Revolution Party established in the wake of last
year's Tahrir Square uprising, told IPS. "And
recent developments have drawn Egypt's judiciary
into the conflict."
On July 8, Mohamed
Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president and
long-time Muslim Brotherhood figure, issued an
executive decree calling on members of the
People's Assembly, the lower house of Egypt's
parliament, to convene. The decree further called
for fresh parliamentary
polls to be held 60 days after approval of a new
constitution via popular referendum.
On
July 10, however, Egypt's High Constitutional
Court (HCC) "suspended" implementation of Morsi's
decree based on an earlier HCC ruling calling for
the dissolution of parliament's lower house. The
constitutional court went on to stress that its
decisions were "final" and "irreversible".
The following day, Morsi backed down.
Vowing to abide by the court ruling, he stressed
the presidency's "respect for the HCC, its judges
and all rulings emanating from Egypt's judiciary".
Morsi's July 8 decree reconvening the
People's Assembly, one of his first major acts as
Egypt's new president, had come as a surprise. Not
only did it contravene a constitutional court
ruling, but it directly countermanded an order
issued by Egypt's military council.
The
battle for legislative primacy began in mid-June,
when the HCC ruled that the regulations governing
last year's legislative polls, which were swept by
the Brotherhood and its Islamist allies, were
unconstitutional. The following day, the military
council ordered dissolution of parliament's lower
house, almost half the seats of which had been
held by the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice
Party (FJP). Many legal experts continue to
question the move's legitimacy.
"The HCC
ruling failed to provide any legal rationale for
dissolving the entire assembly," Atef al-Banna,
professor of constitutional law at Cairo
University told IPS. "The court only found
one-third of the seats in the assembly - those
reserved for independents but which were contested
by party-affiliated candidates - to be
constitutionally questionable."
When Morsi
abruptly ordered the lower house to reconvene,
Brotherhood officials hailed the move as a
"reflection of the popular will". The decision was
taken, leading FJP member Mohamed al-Baltagi said
at the time, "out of respect for the 30
million-plus Egyptians who cast ballots in last
year's parliamentary polls".
Legal
authorities and constitutional law experts,
meanwhile, continue to disagree on the legal and
constitutional validity of Morsi's executive
diktat.
"Issuing the decree was entirely
within Morsi's legal rights. The president of the
republic has the authority to convene the People's
Assembly whenever he wants," Sarwat Badawi,
constitutional law professor at Cairo University,
told IPS.
According to Badawi, it was the
military council's initial order to dissolve the
assembly that was in breach of the law, "since it
wasn't issued by the relevant authority". The
military council, Badawi asserted, "does not have
the legal right to order the dissolution of
parliament".
He added: "The HCC,
meanwhile, is only mandated with ruling on whether
something is constitutional or unconstitutional.
Issuing recommendations on how its verdicts should
be implemented as it did when it called for
parliament's dissolution is outside the court's
purview."
Mohamed Hamed al-Gamal, former
head of Egypt's State Council, the country's
highest judicial authority in legal disputes
between the state and public, strenuously
disagreed.
"Morsi's decision had no
constitutional basis and was outside the authority
of the presidency," al-Gamal told IPS. "What's
more, it directly contravened both the HCC ruling
and the constitutional addendum."
Al-Gamal
was referring to a June 17 constitutional
"addendum" issued by the military council only
days after the initial HCC ruling and only days
before last month's hotly contested presidential
runoff. The controversial addendum significantly
expanded the military council's powers at the
expense of the country's democratically elected
parliament and presidency.
Along with
transferring legislative authority from the
dissolved People's Assembly to the military
council, the addendum also transferred several
major executive prerogatives, not least of which
is the right to declare war, from the presidency
to Egypt's influential generals.
"According to the addendum, the president
will share executive authority with the military
council," prominent political analyst Abdullah
al-Sennawi told IPS. He went on to describe the
move as "nothing less than a soft coup against
Egypt's post-revolution democratic transition".
Some analysts believe that Morsi's
backdown from last week's presidential decree was
a strategic retreat; that the presidency and by
extension the Brotherhood is merely saving its
strength for its primary objective: the abrogation
of the military council's constitutional addendum.
"Morsi's subsequent retreat suggests that
the decree was a test balloon aimed at measuring
the presidency's strength vis a vis the military
council," said Sherif. "If the decree had gone
unchallenged, and parliament was allowed to
reconvene, Morsi would have taken additional steps
aimed at consolidating his position with the
ultimate objective of overturning the
constitutional addendum and restricting the
military's political role."
Morsi
supporters have been arrayed in Cairo's Tahrir
Square since mid-June in varying numbers to
protest against the dissolution of the
Islamist-led People's Assembly and the terms of
the constitutional addendum. Many of them denounce
Egypt's judiciary, describing it as "politicized"
and "packed with Mubarak-era holdovers".
"The recent constitutional court rulings
only confirm that Egypt's judiciary, like most
other state institutions, remains full of Mubarak
loyalists with counter-revolutionary agendas,"
Mohamed Aweida, leading member of the as yet
unlicensed Arab Unity Party told IPS from the
square.
"The idea that these court rulings
are being used to achieve political ends has a lot
to support it," Sherif, too, conceded. "This
includes the uncanny timing of its initial verdict
dissolving parliament, issued only days before
last month's presidential runoff.
"What's
more, the constitutional court took only 45 days
to arrive at a ruling, when decisions on major
constitutional issues usually take years," Sherif
said. He noted that two similar Mubarak-era HCC
rulings both regarding the constitutionality of
parliament, had taken five and two years,
respectively, to decide.
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