Spokesman for the 50-member constitution panel Mohamed Salmawi said on Tuesday 26/11/2013 that 25 percent of seats will be allocated for youths and another 25 percent for women in the municipal councils in the future. The spokesman said that the 50-member panel will discuss today the topic of "positive discrimination" regarding some classes including farmers, workers, women, Copts, people with disabilities and youths. He stressed that the final voting on the draft constitution will take place before the end of December. Salmawi said that the coming parliament will be consisting of one chamber, which is the lower house after a vote was held on canceling the Shura Council (the upper house). On the other hand, the session of the constitution-amending panel suspended yesterday until chairman Amr Moussa contacts Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim to settle the issue of holding a number of participants in a protest outside the Shura Council. The panel will take a 10-minute break during which Moussa will talk to Ibrahim, spokesman of the panel Mohamed Salmawi said. Earlier in the day, security troops arrested about 20 protesters who were calling for canceling military trials for civilians. A security force dispersed the protest using water cannons. The protest was organized by the "No to Military Trials" movement and revolutionary socialists. Participants held banners that read "No to military trials for civilians" and "the socialist popular coalition". They chanted "down down with military rule" and "the Interior Ministry is a thug". In a related context, Salmawi said that there are two questions in the preamble of the rewritten draft of the national charter that need to be further profoundly and independently explained. The first is related to the explanation of the second article of the constitution and the second is about the civil state, Mohamed Salmawi said on Wednesday. The committee has already completed all debates on the constitutional articles and it is almost settled on the text of the preamble except for these two subjects, he told a news conference held at the Shura Council. Once an agreement is reached on them the preamble and all articles of the constitution would be completely finished and ready for a final voting, he said. On the other hand, the Church representative in the panel of the constitution Anba Pola dropped a bombshell when he rejected the article related to Al-Azhar in the constitution, noting that stipulating that Al-Azhar is the reference in the religious affairs would lead to a dominance and control over the Islamic Sharia on the part of Al-Azhar. Source: SIS
