Former People's Assembly Speaker Saad al-Katatny said his recent comments about the state of the dissolved legislature were not attempts to pressure or interfere with judicial affairs.
The privately owned daily Youm7 reported Saturday that Katatny said Parliament would be reinstated by court ruling, as the Supreme Administrative Court is considering a number of cases regarding the validity of the legislative body.
Katatny called this report, and other subsequent reports on his comments, as "inaccurate," in comments posted to his official Facebook page Saturday evening. He said that the people who stress Parliament cannot be reinstated are the same people who try to influence court rulings ahead of time.
He added that the Supreme Administrative Court has the right to decide whether the Supreme Constitutional Court's June verdict on the parliamentary election law — which decreed that the individual seats were elected in violation of the law — should be applied to the whole body or just one-third of it, which is the amount of individual seats.
The Supreme Administrative Court is considering several lawsuits against the dissolution decision, as well as President Mohamed Morsy's decision to reinstate the assembly in July.
Mohamed Fouad Gaballah, the legal adviser to the president, told Anatolia News Agency Saturday that Morsy's decision to reinstate the People's Assembly in July is still in effect. Its application, however, falls in the hands of the judiciary.
Gaballah added that if the court stated that the dissolution only applies to one-third of the seats, the People's Assembly would be reinstated with the remaining two-thirds.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
