CAIRO: Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya rejected the suggested charters of constitutional principles and guidelines for selecting the constituent assembly drafted by the Cabinet after a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Ali Al-Selmy Monday. The group said in a statement that the charter aims at reassuring liberal and leftist streams "at the expense of the Islamic identity" and excluding Islamic streams from drafting the new charter. "The deputy prime minister wanted to discuss with us the suggested charter and we presented our notes which he promised to study and issue a consensual charter," Safwat Abdel Ghani, member of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya's Shoura Council, told Daily News Egypt. The group refused the charter on principle saying that it was "imposed" on the Egyptian people and another version of the previously proposed supra-constitutional principles. It also demanded the addition of "non-secular" to article two of the charter stating that Egypt is a civil, democratic country; modifying article two to make “Islamic Sharia” the main source of legislation rather the “principles of Islamic Sharia”; and canceling an article banning the establishment of religion-based parties. "The definition of a civil state is ambiguous and can be confused with a secular state which will be refused by the Egyptian people," Abdel-Ghani said. The charter states that the political system of Egypt is a democratic republican system that balances between authorities and guarantees the peaceful rotation of power and personal freedoms and rights. It was drafted by a committee of constitutional expert Justice Tahany Al-Gebaly, founder of Masr Al-Horreya Party Amr Hamzawy and others who are considered part of the liberal stream. Al-Selmy, former assistant to chairman of Al-Wafd Party, said that the government seeks the consensus of national powers over the charter in order to issue it in a constitutional declaration ahead of the elections. Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya also said the constituent assembly guidelines gave the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) the authority to veto it, which means that the army will "interfere" in political life. "The guidelines also exclude any of the elected MPs from being part of the constituent assembly," Abdel Ghani said. The document states that the assembly will be made up of 80 members representing societal and professional groups and streams and 20 public figures all chosen from outside the parliament by the majority vote of two thirds of the parliament. Abdel Ghani said that the Islamic streams will issue a separate constitutional principles charter, since “every stream has its own." Salafi groups turned down Al-Selmy's invitation to attend the meeting, saying the charter reflects the views of "secular" streams and that they had already declared their demand for a constitutional state which has an ultimate Islamic reference. Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya presented the documents to establish its political party, the Building and Development Party, to the political parties' committee with 6,700 proxies after eliminating proxies from members who have court rulings against them and are banned from participating in political life.
