Efforts aimed at forming a constituent assembly tasked with writing Egypt's new constitution are moving at a snail's pace, Gamal Essam El-Din reports By the time Al-Ahram Weekly went to press on Wednesday afternoon, there was no sign that parliament's constitutional and legislative affairs committee was able to reach a consensus on forming a constituent assembly capable of writing Egypt's first constitution after the 25 January Revolution. Rumours were rife that parliamentary speaker Saad El-Katatni would hold a meeting yesterday with his two deputies, Ashraf Thabet from the Salafist Nour Party and Mohamed Dawoud from the liberal Wafd Party, along with leading officials from the assembly's legislative and constitutional affairs committee (chairman Mahmoud El-Khodeiri and his two deputies, the Muslim Brotherhood's MP Sobhi Saleh and independent Mohamed El-Omda) to review the results of meetings with several political activists and constitutional law professors over the past three weeks. Six meetings have been held so far, boycotted by more than nine political parties, including the leftist Tagammu Party and the liberal oriented Wafd Party. Officials of these two leading parties said they had urged parliament to endorse the criterion reached three weeks ago in a meeting between the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and leading officials of political parties. "We stick to these criteria and reject any changes made by parliament in this respect," said chairman of the leftist Tagammu Party Rifaat El-Said. Although SCAF's meeting with officials of political parties included representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the FJP seems to have backtracked on the criteria reached in the meeting. This led secular parties to accuse FJP MPs of taking orders from the Muslim Brotherhood's supreme guide and of hijacking parliament to write Egypt's new constitution the way it likes, imposing its religious views on the constitution. El-Katatni said Article 60 of the Constitutional Declaration gives parliament the absolute right to form the constituent assembly and that SCAF and the religious institution Al-Azhar are trying to usurp parliament's right in this respect. El-Katatni has kept tight-lipped on what criteria parliament's constitutional and legislative affairs committee reached on forming the constituent assembly. The deal between SCAF and political parties three weeks ago allowed political parties whose representatives in parliament be included in the constituent assembly. It also allowed representatives of Al-Azhar and Egyptian churches, plus professors of constitutional law and political science, and professional syndicates and trade unions, to be included in the assembly. This gives non-parliamentarians more than 75 seats in the constituent assembly and the rest to parliamentarians. The deal also stated that voting on the articles of the constitution should be no less than 75 per cent rather than 50 per cent as suggested by Islamist parliamentarians. Sources said the assembly's constitutional and legislative affairs committee would suggest that no less than 40 parliamentarians and 60 non-parliamentarians are included in the constituent assembly. This could anger secular political forces who said they would never backtrack on their deal with SCAF. Secular parties also warned that the formation of the constituent assembly be made into law in order to make it immune to appeals against administrative courts.
