UPDATE 30 September 2011: Following a meeting on Wednesday evening, the Democratic Coalition which represents more than 30 political parities and forces threatened to boycott the coming parliamentary elections unless the emergency law which expires on 30 September, is lifted and the electoral law is modified to an all-party list system. The coalition and other political groups from the secular Egyptian Block who attended the meeting, issued a statement with their demands which also included the activation of a law that effectively deprives remnants of the Mubarak regime from political office. On Thursday six presidential hopefuls released a statement announcing the expiry of the emergency law today, 30 September and gave the ruling military council an ultimatum to go back to the barracks by March 2012. Nobel prize winner and presidential hopeful Mohamed El-Baradei didn't sign the statement. On Thursday evening, presidential candidate Mohamed Selim El-Awwa, one of the communiqué's signatories, suspended his campaign until "serious" steps are taken for the transition of power to civilians. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Revolution, radicalised The SCAF's timetable for parliamentary elections, and its detailing of the voting system under which they will be held, can only compound an already tense climate of strikes and growing opposition, writes Amira Howeidy Forty-eight hours ahead of a scheduled demonstration -- "Reclaiming the Revolution" -- tomorrow (Friday) in Tahrir Square and other locations across Egypt the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) issued a constitutional declaration setting dates for parliamentary elections and detailing the electoral law under which they will be held. The date of the presidential election is yet to be decided. The three-stage People's Assembly elections will begin on 28 November and end on 3 January 2012. Its first session will convene on 17 March. Shura Council (upper house) elections will also be held in three stages, beginning on 29 January. The council will convene on 24 March 2012, 13 days after the final runoffs. The election law has been amended to allow two thirds of parliamentary seats to be decided via the party list voting system and one third via individual candidacy. Political forces have been pressing the SCAF in recent weeks to announce a specific timeframe for the transfer of power to a democratically elected government but this is a formula they neither expected nor wanted. A major concern with the voting system announced by the SCAF is that it will allow remnants of the ousted regime to run as independents and effectively buy parliamentary seats by throwing money around. During a recent meeting with the SCAF, representatives of a broad spectrum of political groups pressed for an exclusively list based system, suggesting that individuals who wanted to run as independents could do so on an independent list. SCAF legal experts argued that this would leave the results open to legal challenge before the Supreme Constitutional Court since the 1971 constitution -- currently annulled -- guaranteed individuals the right to run as independents. No agreement was reached and the issue was left pending until the SCAF published its surprise constitutional declaration on 25 September in the official gazette. It passed more or less unnoticed until the official news agency released it on Tuesday afternoon. Political forces also object to the way in which the SCAF's election timetable prolongs the already tense interim period. The 30 March 2011 Constitutional Declaration made it the job of the next parliament to elect a 100-member assembly to draft a new constitution within 12 months. The declaration didn't specify whether presidential elections should be held during or after the drafting of the new constitution. But according to SCAF member Mamdouh Shahin, the presidential poll will take place after a new constitution is drafted, debated and put to a public referendum. "It's up to the assembly that will write the constitution to decide when to finish its job. It can finish in a week or in months. Whenever it's done completely, we'll hold presidential elections," Shahin told the privately owned CBC TV station on Tuesday evening. In a comment to disgruntled political parties who had announced their opposition to the electoral timetable and law, Shahin said the decree was final. As Al-Ahram Weekly went to press on Wednesday evening the Democratic Coalition, which represents more than 30 political parties and forces, including the powerful Muslim Brotherhood, was due to meet at the Freedom and Justice Party's headquarters in Al-Manial. The coalition's coordinator, Wahid Abdel-Meguid, a political expert at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said the meeting would discuss the SCAF's announcement, ways to shorten the interim period and end the emergency law. Boycotting the elections will not be part of the agenda. "It's not a viable option," Abdel-Meguid told Al-Ahram Weekly. "A boycott would extend the interim period even longer and leave the parliament to regime diehards and the Salafis." Hussein Abdel-Razek, a leading member of the left-wing Tagammu Party, is not so sure. The Tagammu, he said, would seriously consider a boycott but only if there is consensus between political forces. "It is vital that we discuss how to respond to the SCAF's disregard of the law," he told the Weekly. The Freedom and Justice Party issued a statement on Tuesday describing the new constitutional declaration as "damaging" and a reflection of the SCAF's and government's "lack of a specific political vision for the interim period". Speaking to the Weekly on Wednesday, cabinet spokesman Mohamed Hegazi said the mixed voting system contained in the SCAF's declaration had been initially proposed by representatives of political forces who were now objecting to it. The law prohibits MPs who run as independents from joining any political party during the lifetime of the assembly. Critics say this deprives individuals of the right to join a party and is, therefore, unconstitutional. After months of growing polarisation between Islamists and secular parties over how Egypt's new constitution should be written, these same groups are closing their ranks in opposition to SCAF's policies. The anti-Islamist Egyptian Block group of parties and coalitions is now on the same side of the divide as the Democratic Coalition, which includes the Brotherhood. Facing them is the SCAF and the government of Essam Sharaf, both of which agreed, two weeks ago, to reinforce the emergency law following the storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo on 9 September. The SCAF announced an extension of the state of emergency to June 2012 and said emergency laws will apply not only to terrorism, drug trafficking and thuggery but to a raft of other offences, including spreading false rumours and obstructing traffic. The U-turn from the SCAF's 30 March constitutional declaration, which stated that the emergency law would be lifted within six months, prompted an unusual show of unity on the part of six leading presidential candidates. The six -- Amr Moussa, Mohamed El-Baradei, Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh, Hamdeen Sabahi, Mohamed Selim El-Awwa and Hazem Abu Ismail -- met several times to agree a list of demands which last week they sent, unsigned, to the SCAF. They have jointly called for an end to the interim period by March 2012, a clear timetable, an immediate halt to the emergency law and an end to the months' long security vacuum. The military council has so far ignored the paper. In a similar vein, more than 45 political and civil society groups last week launched what they called a "popular consensus initiative". One of their demands is an end to military rule by April 2012. The SCAF and government are also facing pressure from a series of nationwide strikes. In the public sector an estimated 750,000 teachers stopped work while 45,000 bus drivers went on strike. They were joined by doctors in government hospitals, mainly outside Cairo. All three groups were demanding better pay and conditions. While both the teachers and doctors suspended their action after officials agreed to their demands, other waves of strikes, including bus drivers and factory workers, loom on the horizon. Where all this will lead is unclear. Political activist Wael Khalil insists that what Egypt is witnessing is the advance of the revolution through pressure being brought to bear on the authorities. "This doesn't mean confrontation," he told the Weekly. "It's proven to be a useful tool and yielded good results. And now it's being used as a way of ending the interim period sooner rather than later."
