- EGYPTFJP News
- May 18, 2012
- 4 minutes read
Saleh: No Crisis If Presidential Elections Held Before New Constitution Writing
Sobhi Saleh, Deputy of Egyptian Parliament’s Legislative Committee, said that the Parliament was careful not to cause a crisis and therefore accepted without much ado the ruling to halt the work of the constitution writing panel, despite all the obviously objectionable issues involved.
Parliament applied the ruling on the same day, even though the formation of the Constituent Assembly was effected by agreement among all Egyptian political parties and stakeholders and segments of society. The objection of most of the members who withdrew from the panel was only for proportions of representation, but none of them even claimed they were not already represented.
Subsequently, the Parliament tasked the Legislative Committee to re-form the Constituent Assembly, called in all the spectra of political and societal stakeholders and listened to their views. It invited more than 200 different political forces and parties, associations and institutions, judiciary and the press and others. They all attended except for 70 people.
Saleh revealed another surprise: a report found that those who criticized and attacked the Parliament did not provide anything other than that already provided by Parliament, and in sum, the report concluded that there were four issues agreed upon, which never were in dispute in the first place.
The issues agreed upon by everyone included representation of women and Copts and the formation of specialized technical secretariats. Those had been, indeed, official demands of Parliament from the beginning. The rest, meanwhile, is still in dispute.
Saleh pointed that, if approved by all, it is possible that the constitution-writing is accomplished in a very short time, because Egypt is not a new State, but a great country with long history that is now writing its ninth constitution.
"We have a tremendous constitutional heritage and highly qualified scholars enabling us to expedite the process of drawing up the new national charter for Egypt.
"We have a scientific study and analysis of all materials approved by constitution scholars from the year 1923 until now. However, under the former regime, we did not have a clearly defined political system, because there was no real will to apply such vital studies on the ground.”
Thus, Saleh continued, there should be no crisis if presidential elections are held and then the constitution is written.
"But we know there are those who are always looking for a convenient crisis, sometimes even endeavoring to fabricate some."
