CAIRO - A battle to garner more seats in Egypt's upcoming legislative elections, which are set to produce a parliament to draft the country's constitution, has moved to courtrooms away from electoral campaigns, with revolutionaries insisting on barring members of the former ruling party from contesting the polls. More than seven rulings by administrative courts were issued Tuesday granting some political powers and independents the right to stand in the elections, while some other rulings deprived candidates from running. “This ushers Egyptians trust the judiciary and hope they can move to democracy very smoothly. However, the more cases are filed in courts regarding elections, the more violence on election day can be predicated,” said Emad Gad, a political analyst at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. He added that the administrative courts and the Higher Elections Commission had a very important role to play. “Those filing the lawsuits should feel Egypt has changed,” said Gad. Thousands of court rulings in elections under Hosni Mubarak were ignored by the then election commission and other State bodies including the parliament itself, with the phrase “The Parliament is the ultimate arbitral” as the answer to such rulings. Courts in Sohag, Alexandria, Giza and Beheira issued verdicts barring or allowing independent candidates and party lists from running. Another issue that is the focus of lawsuits in administrative courts is the barring of remnants of the formerly ruling National Democratic Party as more than 30 cases are pending decision to keep them away from politics. “The corrupt NDP remnants should be barred from running for at least five years, although they can cast their ballots. This needs an urgent intervention by the military council,” said Shadi Harb, the head of the Awarnesss Party. The Supreme Administrative Court on Monday withheld a ruling by a lower court in the Delta city of Mansoura to bar NDP affiliates from running in the polls, stressing this was the power of the legislative. Ahmed el-Fadali, the head of Al-Sallam Democratic Party, hailed the ruling as not contradicting with an April verdict to dissolve the NDP for corrupting the political life in Egypt. “The verdict to allow NDP members to run in polls never contradicts the dissolution of the party. They cannot be excluded from the political life. Let the final word be to the voters,” el-Fadali said. Some revolutionaries have urged they should be barred completely from public life. A website, Emsek Felool ("Catch a Remnant"), encourages people to identify the ex-NDP officials running in their districts and campaign against them. But former members of the NDP remain popular in parts of Egypt. Some experts believe they could garner 20 per cent of the parliamentary seats in case they ran.
