The decision of the Higher Council of the Armed Forces to dissolve parliament and suspend the 1971 constitution could mark the opening of a democratic page in the political history of Egypt, writes Gamal Essam El-Din Egypt's Higher Council of Armed Forces (HCAF) began dismantling the autocratic legacy of former president Hosni Mubarak on Sunday by dissolving parliament, suspending the constitution and promising elections in six months. HCAF's constitutional communiqué, issued on 13 February, said the army will "run the country for an approximate six-month period until democratic presidential and parliamentary elections are held". In the absence of a functioning parliament the council will now issue laws and decrees and ensure that international treaties and agreements are honoured. The above moves, which come two days after the ouster of Mubarak, were welcomed by anti-government protesters. Gamal Zahran, professor of political science at Suez Canal University and a former independent MP, believes the HCAF's order opens the way for a new parliament that effectively represents citizens but must be complemented by other moves. "The primary focus for now should be on parliamentary elections, and on avoiding the overlap of interests between politics and business that so disfigured Egypt's political landscape." To avoid a repeat of the same mistakes Zahran argues that the individual candidacy system must be scrapped. The National Democratic Party (NDP)- dominated People's Assembly that emerged from the two-round election on 28 November and 6 December is the shortest serving parliament since Egypt became a republic, beating the National Assembly formed in 1957 and subsequently dissolved when Egypt entered into a union with Syria to the dubious title. The Shura Council, created by late president Anwar El-Sadat to prepare studies on political, economic and social issues and to revise legislation, has also come to a dramatic end eight months after holding mid-term elections. The dissolution of both houses brings to an end the political careers of Fathi Sorour and Safwat El-Sherif. Sorour, who has served as speaker of the People's Assembly since 1990, is widely believed to have masterminded the 2007 constitutional amendments which paved the way for Gamal Mubarak to inherit power from his father, eliminated full judicial supervision of the elections, and granted Mubarak powers to refer civilians to military tribunals. El-Sherif, a former minister of information, has been chairman of the Shura Council since 2004. Both Sorour and El-Sherif were members of the NDP's political bureau and secretariat-general, entrusted by Mubarak's regime to maintain whatever the cost. El-Sherif graduated from the Academy of Military Sciences in 1951. He later joined the intelligence service. He was appointed chairman of the State Information Service in 1979, of the Egyptian Television and Radio Union in 1981 and became minister of information in 1982. He served as the NDP's secretary for media affairs until 2002, when he was appointed NDP secretary-general. Until recently he had been calling on Mubarak to run for a sixth term, telling an NDP youth camp in Alexandria in August that "Mubarak enjoys good health and the NDP has no other choice to lead the country for another term". Once fixtures of state television news bulletins, El-Sherif and Sorour all but disappeared as events began to unfold on 25 January. According to HCAF's 13 February communiqué a committee will be formed to amend articles in the 1971 constitution. Ahmed El-Gammal, secretary-general of the Nasserist Party, insists that "the HCAF's moves promise to pave the way for a democratic Egypt." He argues that it is sufficient at this stage to tinker with the existing constitution and that any more radical overhaul or wholesale replacement must wait for a democratically-elected president. On 14 February, HCAF selected Tarek El-Beshri, a reformist judge and former chairman of the State Council, as chairman of a new committee tasked with amending the constitution. Minister of Defence and HCAF's chairman, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi met with El-Beshri and the committee's seven other members, most of them constitutional experts. A HCAF statement said that Tantawi gave orders that the committee embark upon amending articles 76, 77, 88, 93, 189 of the constitution, revoking Article 179 and urging that it should finish its job within 10 days. Besides the fact that he is a reformist judge, El-Beshri is a historian who wrote several books on the modern political history of Egypt. El-Beshri, however, is widely believed to be sympathetic with the Muslim Brotherhood. The committee also includes Sobhi Saleh, a famous Alexandria lawyer and a former Brotherhood MP, Atef El-Banna, a constitutional law professor with Cairo University, and other professors and members of the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC). El-Banna indicated that the committee's job could extend to include amending other articles of the constitution and laws regulating exercise of political rights and the formation of parties. "All what is needed to create a new democratic climate will be discussed by the committee," El-Banna said, adding that "when the amendments become complete, they will be put to a vote in a public referendum." El-Banna also argued that "when the process of rotating power peacefully is secured and the Armed Forces go back to their barracks, the new democratically elected president will complete the way towards changing the constitution as a whole."
