Egypt’s parliament met again on Tuesday in an open defying to the generals who have dissolved the assembly last month, provoking tensions with the armed forces just ten days into Mohamed Mursi’s presidency.
Parliament speaker Saad al-Katatni, liking Mursi hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, which has got the biggest axis in parliament, opened up the session with a speech aired live on state television.
The military handing power to Morsi on June 30 after dominating the country for sixteen months, delivered a thinly-veiled warning to the president, telling it would go on supporting the country’s “legitimacy, constitution and law” – language that signifies it won’t stand by and ascertain the rulings of the country’s top court disregarded or breached.
Simultaneously, the Supreme Constitutional Court sent a clear signal that it won’t bow to Morsi’s wish, telling in a affirmation after an emergency meeting on Monday that its June 14 dominating to cancel the Islamist-dominated parliament was final and binding.
“Morsi’s act sets the arrange for a possibly very serious political and constitutional crisis,” told Michael W. Hanna, an expert on Egypt from the New York-based Century Foundation.
Morsi, through his spokesman Yasser Ali, took a firm stand in his decision to meet again the 508-seat chamber on Tuesday was an “affirmation of the popular will.”
His presidential decree also demands new parliamentary elections after a new constitution is acquired, something not being expected before the end of the year – in effect according legitimacy to a legislature the country’s highest courtroom ruled to be invalid.
In its dominating last month, the high court decided that a third of parliament’s members were lawlessly elected under a law allowing candidates from political parties to compete for seats which had been set aside for independents. Based on that verdict, the then-ruling military dissolved the house, where Islamists ascertained more than 70 percent of the seats.
In the days that abided by, the generals broke through a serial of decrees gaving themselves legislative powers, as well as control over the drafting of a new constitution and the national budget. It also bared Morsi of important presidential powers.
The supreme court was to rule Tues – the same day parliament was set to reconvene – on 3 cases interrogating the legality of the president’s order.
The challenge over the fate of parliament has disunited the nation just as Egyptians were looking forward to a illusion of constancy after the commotion of the 17 months since the ouster of longtime authoritarian ruler Hosni Mubarak. Egypt has ascertained a dramatic surge in law-breaking, deadly street protestations, a bumbling economy and apparently non-stop strikes, sit-ins and demonstrations.
Some of the youth groups who organised the uprising which tipped Mubarak sided with Morsi, viewing his move as an effort to curtail the military’s powers. Others saw it as another bid by Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood to follow its own interests instead of the nation’s.
“Morsi’s decision will give us a huge trouble,” anticipated Hesham el-Kashef, a 23-year-old lawyer and rights activist. “He is overwhelming us in legal problems and it’s all for the sake of the Brotherhood.”
