The Mansoura Administrative Court decided on Thursday to ban former National Democratic Party (NDP) members from running for parliamentary seats in Daqahlia Governorate. The court ordered the governorate to stop accepting nominations from "fallen" NDP members and directed the Board of Election Commissioners to prepare a report on the issue. Mahmoud Abdel Khaleq al-Saeed, a resident from Daqahlia Governorate, had filed a claim against the head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the prime minister and the head of the High Elections Commission, calling on them to prevent seven former NDP members in Daqahlia from continuing the registration process for the parliamentary elections set to begin on 28 November. The plaintiff stressed that the High Elections Commission had accepted the nomination papers of a large number of former NDP members despite a previous court decision dissolving the party. The Mansoura Administrative Court ruled that based on the Supreme Administrative Court's 16 April decision to dissolve the NDP and confiscate its funds, former NDP members should not be allowed to participate in politics. "[The Supreme Administrative Court's] decision did not intend to merely confiscate some headquarters that belonged to the NDP. It intended to remove the NDP and its leaders who corrupted Egyptian politics over the last 30 years," the Mansoura court judge said. "With this court's cancelation of former NDP members' nominations for parliamentary elections, it aims to implement a ruling that has already been issued by the Supreme Administrative Court concerning the exclusion of all those who participated or contributed to political corruption," the judge added. “The toppling of the regime entails the fall of all the tools through which it exerted its power,” he said in his ruling. “The most important of these tools were former NDP members who proved with certainty to have corrupted political, economic and social life in Egypt." "Therefore the implementation of the ruling of the Supreme Administrative Court should not be limited only to merely restoring the headquarters and funds of the NDP to the state,” the judge went on. “It must also necessarily be extended to include preventing the leaders, groups and members of the NDP from engaging in political activity in all shapes and forms. This includes preventing them from running in parliamentary elections, as this is the most prominent form of political activity and would allow them to continue corrupting political, economic, social and cultural life in the country.” The judge concluded by saying, "And thus depriving members of the fallen NDP from running in parliamentary elections is based on a legal justification aiming to implement the ruling of the Supreme Administrative Court." Translated from the Arabic Edition
