The deputy head of the State Council said in a phone conversation with Wael Ghonim that the Supreme Constitutional Court’s ruling dissolving Parliament would delay the presidential election, because candidates must have signatures of endorsement from Parliament members, Ghonim said Thursday on Twitter.
“Now the stage of strategic experts is over and a new era of constitutional experts started. We will have a lot of opinions and counter-opinions,” Ghonim wrote.
The law on candidacy for presidential elections stipulates that candidates must have endorsement signatures from either 30 MPs or 30,000 Egyptians in order to be eligible for the presidency.
Former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq and the Muslim Brotherhood's presidential candidate, Mohamed Morsy, will compete in the runoff on 16 and 17 of June.
The incoming president will swear his oath of office before the legislative authority, an authority that would be assumed by the military council in the absence of the Parliament. The incoming president will therefore make a pledge to the defense minister, when it should be the other way around, Ghonim wrote.
Ghonim was the administrator of the Arabic-language Facebook page We Are All Khaled Saeed. Saeed’s death at the hands of police officers in 2010 was one of the triggers for the demonstrations that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak during the 25 January revolution.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
