Egypt Military Coup accomplished: third of parliamentary seats void, Shafik confirmed.

A man walks in front of campaign election posters for presidential candidate and former prime minister Ahmed Shafik in Cairo (Photo: Reuters: Amr Abdallah Dalsh)

Published Thursday, June 14, 2012

Egypt's constitutional court ruled on Thursday that a third of the seats in the Islamist-dominated parliament were invalid, stirring fresh uncertainty in the politically divided country.

"The constitutional court ruled unconstitutional some articles of the parliamentary election law related to the direct vote system," MENA reported, referring to the third of seats elected on a first-past-the-post system.

The ruling military decided on a complex electoral system in which voters cast ballots for party lists which made up two thirds of parliament and also for individual candidates for the remaining seats in the lower house.

The individual candidates were meant to be "independents" but members of political parties were subsequently allowed to run, giving the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party an advantage.

That decision was challenged in court.

The ruling will cast all of parliament's legitimacy into question. Parliament speaker Saad al-Katatni, an Islamist, had said before the ruling that the house would have to consider how to implement it.

In the absence of a constitution, suspended after last year's overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak, no authority had the right to dissolve parliament, Katatni said.

He said one possibility would be to hold by-elections for the seats ruled unconstitutional.

Shafik confirmed

The same court on Thursday gave ex-military officer Ahmed Shafik the green light to run for president as it ruled against a law that would have thrown him out of the race.

The supreme court said Shafik could run in the upcoming presidential election, despite a law which bars senior officials of the Mubarak regime and top members of his now-dissolved National Democratic Party from running for public office for 10 years.

The law applies to those who served in the 10 years prior to Mubarak's ouster on 11 February 2011 after a popular uprising.

The court found that the seats of one third of members were void.

Shafik, Mubarak's last prime minister, will now face Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Mursi in a presidential runoff on Saturday.

Shafik was initially disqualified from standing in the election in accordance with the law passed by the Islamist-dominated parliament in April.

But in late April the electoral commission accepted an appeal from Shafik against his disqualification and the case was referred to the court.

The decision comes two days before the landmark presidential election to choose a successor for Mubarak.

In the first round of voting on May 23 and 24 – which saw 13 candidates compete for the top job – Mursi won 24.7 percent of the vote, slightly ahead of Shafik's 23.6 percent.

The race has polarized the nation between those who fear a return to the old regime under Shafik's leadership and those wanting to keep religion out of politics and who accuse the Muslim Brotherhood – which already dominates parliament – of monopolizing power since last year's revolt.

The next president will inherit a struggling economy, deteriorating security and the challenge of uniting a nation divided by the uprising and its sometimes deadly aftermath, but his powers are yet to be defined by a new constitution.

At Thursday's hearing, the court will also examine a High Administrative Court appeal over the constitutionality of aspects of a law governing legislative polls between last November and February that saw Islamists score a crushing victory.

(Al-Akhbar, AFP, Reuters)

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