Egypt's Islamist-led Shura Council in disarray following Morsi ouster

After removal of president Mohamed Morsi from power, upper house of Egypt's Islamist-led parliament – along with MPs – are in state of confusion

When Egyptian military commander-in-chief and defence minister Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi announced Wednesday that Islamist president Mohamed Morsi was no longer in power, that the constitution had been suspended and that High Constitutional Court (HCC) head Adli Mansour would be interim president, all noted that he refrained from mentioning whether the Islamist-led Shura Council (the upper house of Egypt's parliament) would be dissolved.
The 270-member council was elected in February 2012 and included a majority of 115 members loyal tothe Muslim Brotherhood, the group from which Morsi hails. Allies of the Brotherhood garnered an estimated 20 seats in the council. The ultraconservative Salafist Nour Party – not allied with the Brotherhood –occupies 48 seats.
This puts the total number of Islamist MPs in the Shura Council at around 158 MPs or around 75 per cent of the total.
The fate of the Shura Council was further shrouded in mystery when El-Sisi urged it to finish revising a law regulating elections for the House of Representatives (the lower house of Egypt's parliament, formerly known as the People's Assembly) as soon as possible. The law was drafted by the Shura Council last month and referred back to the HCC for revision.
The question now is whether, once the draft law is revised by the HCC, it will be sent back to the Shura Council for ratification, meaning that the council was still endowed with legislative powers.
Before Morsi was removed from office on Wednesday, several members of the Shura Council, estimated at 35 and mostly allied to secular forces, tendered their resignations. Ahmed Fahmi, chairman of the Shura Council and leading official of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), has not come to his office since Monday.
On that day, he held a closed-door meeting with FJP spokesman Essam El-Erian. Fahmi, however, tried to hold another meeting to discuss the flurry of resignations from the council, but failed to do so because his two deputies – one from the Nour Party and one from the liberal Wafd Party – refused to attend.
After Morsi was removed from office on Wednesday, the majority of Shura Council members – particularly those of the Muslim Brotherhood – did not show up. An informed senior security official in charge of guardingShura Council headquarters told Ahram Online that he did not receive any official orders thatShura Council MPs should be barredfrom entering the building.
"But in spite of this," said the security official, "no Muslim Brotherhood deputy has dared to enter the council." He indicated that most Muslim Brotherhood deputies had visited the Shura Council two or three days ago to collect their personal belongings.
The security official's interview with Ahram Online came in response to several online statements issued by Muslim Brotherhood activists announcing that "Shura Council MPs had decided to meet for an urgent session with the aim of dismissing Defence Minister El-Sisi from office and stressing that Morsi's removal amounted to a military coup."
Commenting on this, the security official told Ahram Online that he thought that "if Muslim Brotherhood MPs had decided to remove General El-Sisi from office as minister of defence, they would do this not through the Shura Council but rather through meeting inside one of their FJP offices."
He pointed out that the Brotherhood's FJP had an office near the Shura Council – on the nearby Mansour Street – that they could use for an urgent session. "But this would be very difficult because the office is directly in front of interior ministry headquarters and near Tahrir Square, where anti-Morsi rallies were being held."
Meanwhile, El-Sisi's statement on Wednesday left constitutional experts divided over the fate of the Shura Council. A constitutional law professor with the Shura Council, who asked not to be identified, told Ahram Online that "as there was not clear word about whether or not it would be dissolved, the Shura Council will remain in effect."
He said: "I think the final word on the issue will be settled when the judge presiding over the High Constitutional Court, who is now himself acting as interim president, issues a constitutional declaration determining, among other things, whether the Shura Council should be dissolved or not."
Most constitutional law professors, however, agree that, "as long as the constitution, promulgated last December, was suspended, the Shura Council should automatically be dissolved."
Rafaat Fouda, a Cairo University constitutional law professor, stressed that, "the HCC last month ordered that the Shura Council be dissolved because the laws governing the election of its members violated the constitution." He added: "It's true that the HCC also said that the Shura Council should stay, but only until the election of a new House of Representatives."
Fouda went on: "Now, after the 30 June Revolution, the equation has completely changed. No one in Egypt will allow parliament, heavily dominated by Muslim Brotherhood, will be entrusted with drafting laws until a House of Representatives is elected."
Fouda also argued that "apart from the fact that it was ruled unconstitutional by the HCC last month, the resignation of most secular deputies, along with the arrest of several Muslim Brotherhood deputies, now makes it quite difficult for the Shura Council to convene again."
Joining forces with Fouda, Gaber Nasser, a prominent anti-Brotherhood constitutional law professor recently elected president of Cairo University, stressed that "the suspension of the constitution automatically leads to the dissolution of the Shura Council."
Nassar said that "when General El-Sisi indicated that interim president Adli Mansour would be authorised with issuing constitutional declarations, it meantthat he would also be in charge of issuing legislation until a new parliament was elected rather than entrusting the Shura Council, which is no longer valid for this job."
Nassar argued that "when Egyptians revolted against Islamist president Morsi, they were also in revolt against the Brotherhood-led Shura Council, which they will never allow to chart their cherished course towards liberal democracy."
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