The 100-member constituent assembly tasked with writing a new constitution became the focus of controversy even before it met, writes Gamal Essam El-Din The first meeting of the 100-member constituent assembly entrusted with writing Egypt's first post-25 January Revolution constitution embarked upon its business yesterday, electing parliamentary speaker Saad El-Katatni as chairman. The meeting also ended up forming a nine- member committee to be tasked with receiving proposals from civil society organisations on the drafting of the constitution and negotiating with members who decided to withdraw from the assembly. The next meeting will be held on 4 April at 6pm. The meeting was held even though only 75 members of the assembly -- or a third of the total -- were present. El-Katatni won unopposed after he received 71 votes out of 72. El-Katatni said he had high hopes that the assembly's members who decided to boycott its meeting will rejoin its ranks "and if this faced difficulties, we would resort to choosing from 40 figures who were elected as reserves." The meeting, which was headed at first by Islamist thinker Mohamed Emara as the oldest member, saw sharp divisions. Deputies of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) strongly criticised members who opted to boycott the meetings of the assembly, emphasising that "none should submit to the pressure of the dictatorship of the minority". Other liberal-oriented members such as Al-Ahram writer and poet Farouk Gweida asked that members who were boycotting negotiate to reach a consensus. The assembly has been heavily criticised by liberal forces who accuse the Islamist parliamentary majority of packing it with their supporters. The drafting of Egypt's new constitution, they charge, has been monopolised by the Islamists, led by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party and the Salafist Nour parliamentary bloc. Anticipating their marginalisation in a process that is supposed -- by as yet undecided mechanisms -- to produce a consensus document, several high-profile liberal figures who did make it onto the committee have said they will not take part in such a "flawed" process. They include Amr Hamzawy, political science professor and former MP Mona Makram Ebeid and the parliamentary spokesman of the liberal Egyptian Democratic Socialist party Ziad Bahaaeddin. Leftists, who had announced they would shun the process two weeks ago, slammed Islamist forces, led by the FJP, for adopting the same tactics as ousted president Hosni Mubarak's now defunct National Democratic Party (NDP). "The selection of members of the constituent assembly was hi-jacked by the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis. We urge all Egyptians to boycott it," announced the Tagammu Party. Abul-Ezz El-Hariri, El-Badri Farghali and Saad Abboud were among the leftist MPs who refused to take part in the 24 March meeting of parliamentarians which elected the 100 members of the assembly. "The meeting," said El-Hariri, "exposed the authoritarian instincts of the Muslim Brotherhood and its determination to impose an assembly chosen along sectarian lines." The final membership of the committee was virtually identical to the list distributed to FJP MPs instructing them on the candidates for whom they should vote. Sixty four of the assembly's 100 members are either members of Islamist movements or have strong ties to them. Of the 50 parliamentarians who will contribute to the drafting of the constitution, 25 are from the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and 11 from the Salafist Nour Party. They are supplemented by independent and party-based MPs who are parliamentary allies of the FJP, including Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat, chairman of the Reform and Development Party and head of the People's Assembly Human Rights Committee, Mahmoud El-Khodeiri, chairman of the People's Assembly Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee, Essam Sultan, deputy chairman of the moderate Islamist Wasat Party, and Wahid Abdel-Meguid, a political analyst with Al-Ahram who served as electoral coordinator of the FJP- led Democratic Alliance. The 50 non-parliamentarians on the committee include a number of Brotherhood and FJP members, the chairmen of the pharmacists', engineers' and journalists' syndicates, clerics from Al-Azhar such as Nasr Farid Wassel, a former grand mufti of Egypt noted for his conservatism, and Mohamed Emara, a Brotherhood writer who has published many attacks on secularism. It also includes the economists Hamed Hassan and Mibied El-Garhi, both advocates of Islamic banking, and professor of constitutional law Atef El-Banna. Other leading Islamist figures elected by the FJP-dominated parliament are the secretary- general of the Association of Private Universities Gamal Nawarah, secretary-general of the Islamic Organisations in Europe Ayman Ali, and the secretary-general of Egyptians Living in Arab Gulf States Mohamed Youssri. The only student representative, Mohamed El-Rakibi, is the nephew of FJP Chairman Mohamed Mursi, and the only diplomat, former ambassador Mohamed El-Tantawi, is well known as an Islamist sympathiser. Non Islamists on the assembly include Egyptian Socialist Democratic Party Chairman Mohamed Abul-Ghar, Wafd Party chairman El-Sayed El-Badawi; the Nasserist chairman of the Bar Association Sameh Ashour and Popular Socialist Alliance head Abdel-Ghaffar Shukr. The five judges elected are the chairman of the Supreme Justice Court Hossam El-Ghiriani; deputy chairman of the Supreme Constitutional Court Ali Awad; chairman of the State Council Judges' Club Yehia El-Dakrouri, State Council consultant Maged Shibita and State Cases Authority judge Ahmed Khalifa. The constituent assembly contains a single representative of human rights organisations, Mustafa Kamel El-Sayed from the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR). Deputy parliamentary speaker Ashraf Thabet, a Nour Party MP, announced -- optimistically as it turned out -- that "we have high hopes no one will withdraw from the constituent assembly". They should not withdraw, he continued, "because the assembly represents all political, religious and social sectors and what is important is the writing of the constitution rather than the make-up of the constituent assembly itself". But withdraw many did, and they did so because they didn't believe Thabet. Nor, it seems, were they reassured by the somewhat obscure arithmetic behind senior FJP official Mohamed El-Beltagui's assurance that "the number of Islamists in the assembly does not exceed 30 per cent". Indeed, the arithmetic of the election of constituent assembly members defeated many of the participating MPs. After a vote count that lasted more than 13 hours 54, or almost 10 per cent of the 589 MPs who cast a ballot, were found to have spoiled their ballot papers. "Some voted for one candidate twice and others wrote the name of the candidate but wrote a code number of another candidate," said Mustafa Bakri, head of the committee in charge of supervising the vote-counting process. Since the announcement of the results on 25 March several calls have been made by leftist and liberal political forces for a mass return to Tahrir Square. A number of appeals have also been made to the State Council contesting the constitutionality of reserving 50 per cent of seats on the constituent assembly for sitting MPs. The State Council has said it will issue its verdict on the appeals on 10 April.
