CAIRO: Egypt will hold parliamentary elections in September but a date has not been set for presidential elections, announced the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) on Monday. The SCAF has been charged with the country's administration since the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak on February 11, and since then there has been great debate over when presidential and parliamentary elections will be held and which should come first. Major General Mamdouh Shaheen, a member of the SCAF, said at a press conference that the constitutional declaration will be issued within two days and that parliamentary elections will take place in September as previously announced, reported state news agency MENA. Local newspapers highlighted reports that Presidential elections will be delayed until June 2011, but the SCAF denied the reports in a communiqué on its Facebook page on Sunday. The constitutional declaration will include the eight amendments to the 1971 constitution approved in a public referendum on March 19, as well as 36 other articles, agreed upon by all segments of society, that would govern Egypt until a new constitution is written. Under the amendments, the next parliament is required to draw up a new constitution. Shaheen also indicated that the Emergency Law, in place since the assassination of President Sadat thirty years ago, could be lifted before parliamentary elections in September. “Parliamentary and presidential elections will not be held under the state of emergency,” Shaheen said. Also on Monday the curfew was changed to 2am-5am. Previously, the curfew ran from midnight to 6am. The announcements coincide with the issuance of a new law on political parties which eases the process of licensing parties but still bans the formation of political parties based on religion. The law would take authority from the Shura Council's Political Parties Affairs Committee, which was headed by a previous secretary general of the formerly ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), Safwat El Sherif, and was a major hindrance to the formation of new political parties for years. General Shaheen said the new law on political parties will facilitate the formation of political parties over the upcoming period. He said that under the new law, the government will not support parties financially and parties which meet the guidelines can receive their licenses by simply notifying the proper authorities. The parties committee will be purely judicial, and administrative bodies will not play a role in forming new parties. The new law stipulates that the committee will be headed by the vice president o f the Court of Cassation, aided by two State Council deputy chairmen. Under the law, applicants must send a request to the committee which in return should reply within 30 days. If the applicants do not receive a reply from the committee within that period, the party becomes legally accredited the next day. The law also stipulates that each party must have 5,000 members from 10 different governorates, at least 300 from each, and all parties have to make their purposes and sources of funds clear. It also prevents parties from picking their members based on religion or other discriminatory criteria such as gender, language or origin. BM
