Deputy Prime Minister Yehia al-Gamal announced that the Conference of National Reconciliation will begin to meet Saturday in Cairo International Conference Center in Nasr City. "The conference aims at providing an initial vision for the constitutional heritage of Egypt and delineate the general principles of the new constitution, so as to contribute in helping the elected Constituent Assembly develop a new constitution for the country," said Gamal, adding that specialized committees would be formed during the conference for the completion of this task. In the same context, Ammar Ali Hassan, the head of the research department in the official Middle East News Agency said that the conference is like a political "mastaba"(meaning: a bench where peasants sit in front of houses in Egyptian rural areas) where politicians wear stylish clothes. He added that the conference will not be useful as participants are chosen and invited by authorities. "This makes the conference lack the principle of parity, which is a basic principle in dialogue on important future issues, including the constitution," he said. "Second, participants who will be sitting around the table don't represent the Egyptian people, in violation of a basic principle for any dialogue. Third, what will be agreed upon is not guaranteed to be included in the new constitution; therefore, these sessions will just turn into talk to fill the political vacuum and won't have significant impact ," said Hassan. He pointed out that there must be guarantees to include the results of a national dialogue in the coming constitution. For his part, Emad Gad, an Israeli affairs expert in Egypt's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, and one of the participants in the national conference, said that the conference is marred by a state of chaos, as there is no specific body sponsoring the dialogue. "A limited number should have been invited to guarantee fruitful results," he said. "It is said that the dialogue aims to set the general principles of the new constitution, in order to guide the coming parliament, which means setting proper guidelines for a parliament which will represent 50 percent of workers and peasants,” Gad pointed out. Political Science Professor Saif Abdel Fatah said that discussing a constitution is a matter that concerns the people and that no one has the right to presuppose what the constitution will look like. Translated from the Arabic Edition
