CAIRO - The Chairman of Al-Wasat Party asserted on Sunday that they don't have a candidate for first Egyptian presidential elections since last year's ousting of Hosni Mubarak's regime, the official Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported. Abul Ela Madi said that the party will support presidential hopeful Mohamed Selim el-Awa in the elections, to be held on May 23 and 24. Madi added it's good that we have a national unity government before the presidential elections, stressing that we need fair and legal rules to govern the electoral process. He also said that we need a conciliatory constitution. "A constitution supposed to be effective for decades should be conciliatory, and conciliation needs two important things: forming the constituent assembly and writing the constitution." Madi explained that the assembly should be representative of all segments of the public and political trends, as well as women, Copts, young people, the elderly, and those living in remote areas like Siwa and Sinai. In adding that writing a new constitution doesn't mean holding new elections, he suggested that it should allow the new president and parliament to complete a four-and-five-year term respectively. He rejected the idea of reconciliation with Mubarak's regime, in order to retrieve the looted money that has fled the country, as we can't guarantee that they'll return all of the money. El-Awa told a TV talk show recently recently that he believes he will end up contesting the runoffs with another strong candidate. During his meeting with businessmen on Sunday, el-Awa said the next President will come up with a new strategy for the Egyptian economy, although it will take some time to implement. El-Awa plans to set up new projects that will employ either five, 35 or 100 people, which he argues are ideal for reducing unemployment, as they don't require much money. He also spoke about much bigger projects to ease the country through this critical phase. The door will open for presidential candidate nominations between 10 March and 8 April. Once the above-mentioned process has been completed, the elected president will be sworn in at a parliamentary session (of both the Upper and Lower Houses) on 30 June. This will in effect allow the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to return to the barracks and hand over power to the newly elected president. Concerning the new constitution that is yet to be drafted, the upper and lower houses of parliament will be in charge of forming a 100-member constituent assembly this month, responsible for this. If the new constitution completed before the month of June, the presidential elections will be regulated by the new instrument; if not, the electoral process will rely on the constitutional declaration of the March 2011 referendum. The presidential campaigning period will begin on April 30 and end two days before Election Day. According to the Higher Presidential Elections Commission, candidates must collect at least 30,000 signatures of citizens from no less than15 Egyptian governorates. The commission has also set a maximum of LE10 million as campaigning expenditure for each candidate. Political parties aim to play a significant role in the constitution-writing process and some commentators fear hard-line Islamists may seek to limit personal' freedoms. The assembly will have to try to establish what role to give the military, which for decades has had no civilian oversight. Some Islamists are expected to defend the status of the military, in what political watchers suspect is a tacit deal between the two. Some MPAs say that writing the constitution will not be easy. Egyptians need real debate about their constitution.
