Mona El-Nahhas provides a résumé of the members of the Presidential Elections Commission, a body whose decisions cannot be appealed The 2011 Constitutional Declaration named the following as members of the judicial commission that will supervise the presidential poll: Farouk Sultan, chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court (chairman); Abdel-Moez Ibrahim, chief justice of the Appeals Court; Maher El-Beheiri, senior deputy of the Supreme Constitutional Court; Mohamed Metwalli, senior deputy of the Court of Cassation and Ahmed Khafagi, senior deputy of the State Council. Hatem Bagato, secretary-general of the commission, was not included among the original commission members, but seconded to the secretariat-general by decree. Farouk Sultan is a former army officer. He worked as a military judge for 11 years before being appointed assistant minister of justice for specialised courts. In 2009 President Hosni Mubarak appointed Sultan chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court, to the dismay of existing members. The move was seen in legal circles as an attempt to undermine the court and pave the way for Gamal Mubarak's presidential bid. As head of the Southern Cairo Court Sultan was also in charge of the judicial commission that supervised elections at professional syndicates. He repeatedly stalled elections and failed to implement court rulings ordering new polls at the Engineers' Syndicate. Abdel-Moez Ibrahim chaired the judicial commission which supervised the first post-revolution parliamentary poll. In March he was accused of pressuring a court panel to lift the travel ban on the six American defendants in the high profile, politically charged NGO foreign funding case. Eventually Ibrahim referred the case to another panel which lifted the ban. Ibrahim has also been criticised for asking Fahim Darwish, head of the court panel hearing charges against prime minister Atef Ebeid and former Agriculture Minister Youssef Wali, to step down. Darwish refused and both Ebeid and Wali were sentenced to 10 years with hard labour. Ibrahim has also been the centre of controversy over the prosecution of former regime figures accused of killing demonstrators during the infamous Battle of the Camel. Maher El-Beheiri was a member of the panel that refused an appeal contesting the constitutionality of amendments to Article 76 of the 1971 constitution, widely believed to have been tailored to allow Gamal Mubarak to succeed his father. El-Beheiri is rumoured to have argued strongly for the controversial article which was added to the constitution in 2005. Mohamed Metwalli enjoys a good reputation among fellow judges. Though not thought to be close to decision-making circles during the Mubarak era he was a member of the judicial commission that supervised the 2010 parliamentary polls, marked by massive voter fraud. Ahmed Khafagi has been the focus of criticism for what many colleagues say is a failure to support national issues. Hatem Bagato was a close aide of former justice minister Mamdouh Marei during the period in which Marei consistently acted to undermine calls within the judiciary for greater independence. A petition is currently before the Administrative Court asking for Bagato to be excluded from the commission.
