CAIRO (Updated) - Egypt's Higher Administrative Court overturned a ruling by a lower tribunal barring affiliates of the formerly ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) from standing in the parliamentary elections due later this month, stressing that the legislative authority is the one to take such a decision. “The court suspends the ruling to bar six members of the disbanded NDP from running in the polls. They can stand the parliamentary elections,” said Judge Magdi el-Agatti, the same judge who ruled to dissolve the NDP in mid-April. He added that the judiciary could not bar any members of any Egyptian party, whether dissolved or not, from running in the polls. “This is the power of the legislative,” el-Agatti said in his ruling. A lower administrative court in the northern Delta city of Mansoura ruled on Friday to ban members of former NDP from running, setting off a string of lawsuits nationwide aimed at removing such candidates from the race. Dozens of former NDP members have registered to run as independents or on other party lists in the elections, which are thought to be the first free and fair ones after decades of tampered politics. Eliminating any members associated with the former ruling party could have meant party lists and candidate applications would have to be reviewed from scratch, disrupting the vote or potentially even delaying it, analysts had said. Outside the court, supporters of the NDP members raised banners and photos of the candidates, calling on them to be allowed into the elections. They chanted “God is great” upon hearing the ruling was in their candidates' favour as some of the revolutionaries attending the court session, promised to step up their popular campaign against the NDP affiliates. The ruling can not be appealed, since the Higher Administrative Conrt is the supreme judicial authority in Egypt. “Sure, we will fight until these corrupt NDP figures be kept away from politics,” Injy Hamdi, a spokesman for April 6 Youth Movement, told the Egyptian Mail. In October, members of the former regime held a mass rally and demanded to be allowed to run in the elections saying they should not be excluded from the post-revolt process. The court had ordered that the NDP, the party of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, should be dissolved on April 16. According to that ruling, all assets of the National Democratic Party were seized and handed to the Government. Mubarak, his two sons and key figures in his regime are standing trial for corruption and ordering the shooting of peaceful protesters. The dissolution of Mubarak's party has been a key demand of the protesters who drove him from power. Its offices were among the buildings targeted during the uprising. The NDP had dominated the country's politics since it was set up by Mubarak's predecessor Anwar el-Sadat in 1978.
