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Egyptian liberals walk out

March 24, 2012

The liberal minority in Egypt's parliament has walked out of a vote on a panel charged with drafting the nation's post-revolution constitution. The liberal parties accuse the Islamist groups of dominating the process.

https://p.dw.com/p/14RBU
epa03157392 Egyptian polling employees count votes following elections to choose members of constituent assembly tasked with drafting the new constitution, in Cairo, Egypt, 24 March 2012. Media reports stated that a joint parliament session convened on 24 March to elect the 100-member committee that will draft Egypt's post-revolution constitution. The committee will be made up of 50 members from the parliament, while the remaining 50 will be legal experts, academics, intellectuals, unions' members and religious scholars. EPA/STRINGER +++(c) dpa - Bildfunk+++
Ägypten Kairo Abstimmung über Verfassungsrat im ägyptischen ParlamentImage: picture-alliance/dpa

Liberal parliamentarians in Egypt on Saturday boycotted a vote to appoint a panel to draft a new constitution, accusing the majority Islamist parties of a power grab that would see the body dominated by their choice picks.

"It's ridiculous," said Naguib Sawiris, founder of the Free Egyptians Party, the largest liberal bloc in the Islamist-dominated parliament. "A constitution being written by one force and one force alone. We tried our best, and there was no use."

The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, had promised to appoint the 100-member constitutional panel through consensus. But the FJP and the more hard-line Salafists raised controversy when they passed a measure that called for half of the panel's members to come from the lower and upper houses of the legislature.

The FJP and the Salafists make up three-quarters of parliament while the liberal Egyptian bloc occupies just 9 percent of the seats in the lower house. The FJP presented a list of its 50 parliamentary nominees for the panel, which included 36 Islamists and 14 lawmakers from other parties.

"The constitution should not reflect the majority, it should reflect all forces in society," said Rifaat al-Said, the head of the left-wing Tagammu party, which boycotted the vote from the start.

"There is an attempt to posses everything," he said of his party's Islamist opponents. "Possessing the constitution is the most dangerous thing."

ElBaradei is excluded

In addition to the 50 parliamentarians who will sit on the panel, the remaining 50 members are to be public figures chosen from outside of the legislature. But former UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohammed ElBaradei, one of Egypt's leading liberal democracy advocates, has been excluded from participating on the panel.

FJP parliamentarian Mohammed el-Beltagi said on his Facebook page Friday that ElBaradei would have been included "only if he didn't oppose the current road map" for drafting the constitution.

The 100-member constitutional panel will be charged with the critical task of deciding the strength of the executive branch, the role of the military and the importance of Shariah law. Many liberal groups are concerned that the Muslim Brotherhood and the hard-line Salafists could cut a deal with the ruling military council, allowing the armed forces to maintain much of their power if they don't oppose the passage of stricter Islamic rules.

"A parliament whose legitimacy is in doubt will elect a panel, half of it from parliament, that is not partial to forming a constitution for Egypt rather than for the (parliamentary) majority," ElBaradei posted on his Twitter account.

slk/tm (AP, AFP)