The Freedom and Justice Party’s parliamentary bloc on Saturday endorsed the criteria formulated in a meeting between the ruling military council and political parties regarding the formation of the Constituent Assembly.
‘“The FJP would be represented by 15 members in the assembly” according to the proposal, said bloc member Hatem Abdel Azim. “Other political parties are free to choose representatives from within or outside Parliament.”
Abdel Azim explained that the new criteria are positive steps, as it has been agreed that the criteria for forming the Constituent Assembly will be laid out in a law. This would allow Parliament to retain the right to formulate an appropriate law, and take jurisdiction away from an administrative court, he added.
“The party is still contemplating the members it will nominate for the assembly,” he said.
Wahid Abdel Meguid, coordinator of the FJP-led Democratic Alliance and a member of the mediation committee to resolve the crisis over the Constituent Assembly, said the joint session of the People’s Assembly and Shura Council to elect the assembly members would be determined once all political parties announce their position on the formation criteria recommendations.
He added that certain issues have still not been resolved, such as one, raised at the meeting, that all 18 parties represented in Parliament should also be represented in the assembly. The first time the Constituent Assembly was formed, it was decided that only 11 parties would be included to allow for more representation from outside the political sphere.
In a meeting with political parties on Saturday, the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces said that the constitution should be crafted before the presidential election runoff.
The meeting also decided that four members of the assembly would include four Al-Azhar representatives, six Egyptian church representatives, 10 legal and constitutional scholars, two farmers’ representatives and two labor representatives, as well as general representatives for women, student movements and those with special needs.
Mohamed Morsy, the FJP’s presidential candidate and president of the party, did not attend the meeting.
The new agreement on the assembly’s formation comes on the heels of a previous fiasco, when the State Council’s Administrative Court ruled a mostly Islamist and MP-dominated Constituent Assembly dissolved earlier this month.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
