CAIRO: Former Minister of Information Mansour Hassan was elected president of the Advisory Council formed by Egypt's military council last week. Sameh Ashour, head of the Lawyers' Syndicate, and Abul Ela Mady, head of Al-Wasat Party, were chosen as his deputies. Six prominent candidates missed the council's first meeting including presidential hopeful Amr Moussa and telecom mogul and founder of the Free Egyptians Party Naguib Sawiris. Ashour said 24 of 30 council members attended the Sunday meeting. Head of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party Mohamed Nour Farahat was chosen as the council's secretary general. The council members elected the four through direct secret ballot. The main responsibility of the council is to assist the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) in governing the country until a new president is elected by the end of June 2012. Its role is completely consultative, while final decisions would be left to SCAF. The council was established on Thursday based on a decree issued by the military ruler. "It was a procedural meeting, we asked the secretariat to set up the next meeting's agenda," said Ashour. Next week's meeting will be held on Tuesday. The council is scheduled to convene once a week at the Institute for Leadership and Development in Agouza. SCAF is supposed to meet with the council once a month. An extraordinary meeting can be held any time on the request of SCAF or at least one third of the council's members. The council's first mission will be to discuss draft laws regulating presidential elections and the mechanism and criteria for selecting the members of the constituent assembly responsible for drafting the new constitution. Emad Abdel Ghaffour, head of the Salafi Al-Nour Party and council member, previously told DNE that the council would only draft general regulations guaranteeing that the assembly would represent all Egyptian factions. The Muslim Brotherhood's (MB) political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), had withdrawn last week from the council, following controversial statements by SCAF to foreign media. On Wednesday, General Mokhtar Al-Molla told a group of American and British journalists that the ruling council would appoint a civilian Advisory Council to approve the constituent assembly, along with the interim government. The general said the military wouldn't intervene directly in the constitutional process. Instead, the Advisory Council “would make suggestions to the military council while also representing the military council to parliament." However, SCAF General Mamdouh Shahin stressed in statements published Sunday that the Advisory Council, the new government and SCAF would have no hand in selecting the constituent assembly, contradicting Al-Molla's announcement. Shahin said that the parliament is the only authority responsible for selecting the constituent assembly, which will draft the new constitution, according to state owned Al-Ahram newspaper on Sunday. Despite Shahin's statement, the MB issued a statement of its own on Sunday, backing the FJP's decision to withdraw from the Advisory Council. FJP head Mohamed Morsi and the party's assistant Secretary General Osama Yassin withdrew from the council last week, after the controversial statements were published. The MB said that the Advisory Council would try to reproduce a document of constitutional principles proposed by former Deputy Prime Minister Ali El-Selmy, which regulated the selection of the constituent assembly — reducing the parliament's power in the process — and guaranteeing the secrecy of the military budget. On Nov. 18, a mass protests in Tahrir Square rejected El-Selmy's document, describing him as a "pawn" in SCAF's hands. The MB also slammed Al-Molla's statements saying he defied democracy and stripped the parliament of its role in selecting the constituent assembly, by claiming that the new parliament didn't represent Egyptians. Al-Molla said in the conference that the new parliament didn't represent all of the Egyptian people, indirectly referring to Islamist parties which won around 60 percent of the vote in the first round of elections. “Do you think that the Egyptians elected someone to threaten their interests and Egypt's economy and security and relations with international community?” Al-Molla was quoted as saying in the New York Times (NYT). “Of course not.” Presidential hopeful Mohamed Selim Al-Awa said in statements published Sunday during a symposium in Damanhour, that SCAF would deny the statements made by Al-Molla to the foreign press, in an official statement, according to Al-Ahram. By Sunday evening, the SCAF hadn't released any statements.
