Following an emergency meeting of Freedom and Justice Party’s leaders Saturday morning, sources said that Muslim Brotherhood Shura Council members in attendance called for former presidential candidate Khairat al-Shater to be appointed prime minister. The members said because Morsy was elected president, the Brotherhood party has the right to lead the cabinet.
During the meeting, the high-ranking Brotherhood and FJP officials also discussed the formation of the rest of the new cabinet, and how the future government would function separately from the Muslim Brotherhood as a group.
Among those in attendance were the now-dissolved People's Assembly speaker Mohamed Saad al-Katatny, acting head of the FJP Essam al-Erian, Shura Council speaker Ahmed Fahmy, and President Mohamed Morsy’s political adviser Essam Haddad.
Informed sources told Al-Masry Al-Youm that Haddad attended the meeting to represent Morsy. The source said that Haddad had been sent to deal with tensions between the new president and the group, after Morsy objected to some remarks on government administration from Brotherhood leaders.
Also on the table were the dissolution of People's Assembly and the lawsuit demanding the dissolution of the Shura Council, Mokhtar al-Ashry, chairman of the legal committee of the FJP, told Al-Masry Al-Youm.
"The meeting [discussed] the political and legal steps for the return of People's Assembly and the crises brought up to obstruct the work of the Constituent Assembly of the Constitution," Former head of the FJP People's Assembly bloc Saad al-Husseiny said after exiting the meeting.
Other participants refused to make statements to the reporters stationed outside the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
