CAIRO - Deputy Prime Minister Ali el-Selmi said that proposals for setting specific rules for drafting the nation's new constitution are debatable and that such proposals would be "just guidelines" for the panel to hammer out the constitution. "These proposals are debatable until we reach consensus on them. That's why we have amended articles 9 and 10, although some of the powers which attended the Tuesday meeting rejected this," el-Selmi said in a press conference Thursday. He added that the parties and political powers which rejected the constitutional principles document or those who called for some of it to be amended are invited to attend new meetings to discuss this. The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most powerful political bloc, threatened yesterday to bring its supporters out onto the streets over the Government's plans to set out the basics of the new constitution away from an elected People's Assembly. The Brotherhood and other parties, most of them also Islamist, said that 1 million people will protest nationwide on November 18 if the plans to pre-empt the promised People's Assembly to be elected early next year are not abandoned. The Islamists were reacting to comments by el-Selmi that appeared in Wednesday's edition of the State-owned daily Al-Ahram, in which he said the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces was "carefully considering" a plan for “a declaration of basic principles". The Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, called for el-Selmi's resignation. "All the parties rejecting the document are invited to another meeting to craft the constitutional principles. I would like to stress to them that these principles are not compulsory," he explained. However, the deputy premier said he would take legal measures against those who oppose his approach to discussing the constitutional principles. "All the accusations are lies," el-Selmi said, without going into further details about the legal measures he might take. Some political powers withdrew from the Tuesday meeting rejecting two articles of the principles, which would give absolute powers to the army. Magdi el-Sherif, the head of the Revolution Guards Party, called on the SCAF to hold an emergency meeting with all political powers in order to discuss the constitutional principles. "The SCAF should also take the reservations of the political powers into consideration," he added. The declaration of principles being considered by the military government would state: "Egypt is a civil, democratic state which unites all of its citizens without distinction under the rule of law." This clause is intended as a safeguard for Egypt's Coptic Christian minority which makes up between 6 and 8 per cent of the 80 million population. The basic principles would also state that "the Sharia [Islamic Law] is the main source of legislation", but not the sole one.
