The heads of 11 political parties threatened on Sunday to mobilize 15 million people, take over municipality headquarters, block railway lines and cut power cables in response to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) announcement that it is considering applying the Treachery Law. The law includes political isolation legislation that would prevent remnants of the formerly ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) from participating in politics for two years. Following a meeting at the Freedom Party headquarters, party leaders issued a statement, which was sent to the SCAF, rejecting the political isolation of any Egyptian citizen. Signatories included the Freedom Party, Modern Egypt Party, Generation Party, Egyptian Citizen Party, and the Shaab Party. During a meeting with a number of party representatives on Saturday evening, Sami Anan, deputy chief of the SCAF, agreed to consider the Treachery Law, which prevents NDP figures and its former MPs from exercising their political rights for a period of two years. Freedom Party chairperson Moataz Mahmoud told Al-Masry Al-Youm that “political isolation is similar to unjustly executing citizens.” He went on to say that “all families and tribes in North and South Sinai, [Marsa] Matrouh, Aswan and Assiut were members of the dissolved NDP, but they are now oppressed and are not receiving their constitutional rights.” Moataz said a million-man demonstration and sit-in will be organized to protest the SCAF's invitation of certain parties to its meeting, but not others. “Despite being recognized and approved as parties by them, they ignored us during this meeting and we did not participate in the decision-making process, which contradicts the principles of the revolution,” said Moataz. “Therefore, we will hold a conference this week for 500 candidates nationwide and each candidate is backed by a whole constituency, which means more than 30,000 citizens.” According to Moataz, this means a total of 15 million people can be mobilized by these parties. Moataz described the conference as a “preliminary warning for everyone to know how strong we are and that our silence was not out of weakness.” Translated from the Arabic Edition
