CAIRO - Egypt's Supreme Presidential Elections Commission (SPEC) announced that it suspended all its activities and postpone meetings scheduled for Tuesday with presidential candidates and media personnel. According to SPEC Secretary-General Hatem Bagato, the decision came in response to what the commission sees as parliamentary encroachment on its affairs, following a Monday session of the People's Assembly (the lower house of Egypt's parliament) in which several proposed amendments to Egypt's presidential elections law were preliminarily approved by MPs in attendance. SPEC President Farouk Sultan said on Tuesday that the commission had called on Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), as the country's de facto ruler, to intervene in the crisis to ensure the clear division of power between various state authorities, which, he said, parliament had clearly violated. He added that parliament's preliminary approval on Monday of amendments to the presidential elections law represented a "clear infringement" on the SPEC's jurisdiction.
