Whether Egypt's newly elected parliament will be dissolved is expected to be decided by the Supreme Constitutional Court one month from now, Gamal Essam El-Din reports The Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) announced on 6 May that it will suspend its final judgement on the alleged unconstitutionality of the law which regulated the elections of the two houses of parliament. In a meeting held on Sunday, a SCC panel of consultants said its anticipated report on the law would be complete after one month. "This month is intended to allow those who filed the case and those who are against it to present their arguments," said the court. According to the SCC law, a report should be prepared by the court's panel of consultants before it is referred to the court for a final verdict. The SCC meeting on 6 May was held after a preliminary report by its panel of consultants recommended two weeks earlier that the law which regulated parliamentary elections -- from December 2011 to February 2012 -- be ruled unconstitutional. The report was prepared after a case was first filed by a number of lawyers and political activists in the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC). They argued that the parliamentary election law was discriminatory against independent candidates. "It gave candidates running on party lists an unfair advantage over their independent counterparts," said Hamdi El-Fakharani, an independent MP and one of those who filed the case. El-Fakharani said "the law devoted two-thirds of seats of parliament to party-based candidates and just one-third to independent ones." Worse, he added, the law also allowed members of political parties to compete for independent seats. "This means that the law gave political parties an unfair advantage over independent candidates and at the expense of equality," said El-Fakharani. He added, "political parties exerted pressure on the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces [SCAF] not only to devote two-thirds of seats to competition among party-based candidates, but also to allow them to field candidates to compete for independent seats. As a result, most of those who won as independents rejoined political parties which fielded them in the elections at the expense of truly independent candidates whose number in parliament does not exceed 31," said El-Fakharani said. El-Fakharani argued that in 1987 and 1990, the SCC ruled that the two parliaments elected in 1984 and 1987 were unconstitutional "because the laws which regulated these elections were discriminatory against independent candidates." As a result, said El-Fakharani, two parliaments -- elected in 1984 and 1987 -- were ruled unconstitutional and were dissolved. Lawyers who filed the case also argued that the vote of Egyptian expatriates in foreign countries was not held under judicial supervision or in secret ballot. "The vote was held under the supervision of the Egyptian diplomatic corps which violates Article 39 of the constitutional declaration which states that all polling stations be held under complete judicial supervision," the lawsuit stated. When reviewing the case, SAC said on 22 February that the law violated equality between independent and party-based candidates and that this went against constitutions which state that citizens should be treated on an equal footing, especially in terms of exercising political rights. SAC said the parliamentary election law, which was approved by SCAF, had allowed members of political parties to compete for parliamentary seats reserved for individual candidacies. "The practice violated the rights of independent contenders who were barred from vying for seats set aside for party-list candidates," said SAC. On 22 February, SAC referred several articles of the parliamentary election law to Egypt's Constitutional Court for a final verdict. The issue has been one of several ongoing crises between the SCAF-appointed government of Prime Minister Kamal El-Ganzouri and Egypt's Islamist-dominated parliament, during which both sides have questioned each other's legitimacy. For the past several weeks, the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) has been urging SCAF to dismiss the El-Ganzouri government to allow the parliamentary majority to appoint a new one in its place. The military council, however, as the country's highest political authority, has repeatedly rejected the request. On 30 April, Parliamentary Speaker Saad El-Katatni announced a one-week suspension of all parliamentary activity to protest against the SCAF's refusal to dismiss the government. Parliament formally resumed its activities on Sunday. The FJP selected a lawyer to defend the law against SCC. This, however, could not be enough and the parliamentary election law could be ruled unconstitutional. "If ruled unconstitutional, SCAF's chairman or the newly elected president should issue an order for the dissolution of the two houses of parliament," said Fawzia Abdel-Sattar, a constitutional law professor and a former chairwoman of parliament's legislative and constitutional affairs committee. Abdel-Sattar, however, said that "SCC could rule that just the one-third of seats reserved for independents must be ruled unconstitutional and in this case new elections could be held to re-elect the seats reserved to independents only." In another scenario, said Abdel-Sattar, SCC could rule that the law as a whole is unconstitutional "and in that case the two houses of parliament would be dissolved and a new law issued to elect a new parliament."
