Political parties and movements across the spectrum are deeply divided over the meeting on Saturday that gathered Armed Forces Chief of Staff Sami Anan, the second highest ranking member of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), with representatives of 15 out of 50 of Egypt's political parties.
The participants, including al-Sayed al-Badawy, chairman of the Wafd Party, and Mohamed Morsy, head of the Freedom and Justice Party, signed a statement following the meeting in which they expressed their support for the ruling military council, a move that infuriated other political actors.
“This is a game, " said Ola Shaba, an activist from Egypt's leftist Popular Socialist Coalition Party. "The SCAF wants to tell people that political forces support its visions and agree on its timetable. The reality is that the SCAF is in a major dilemma since it runs the country with the old tactics of [former President Hosni] Mubarak.”
Some activists expressed their frustration online, creating Facebook pages attacking the political parties that participated in the meeting. One of those pages entitled “Those Parties Don’t Represent Me” said that the document is simply a “document of submission” to the SCAF.
Almost eight months since the generals came to power after the ousting of Mubarak on 11 February, activists have accused the military of following many of the same hated practices of the Mubarak regime, including the referral of thousands of civilians to military courts, the application of rigid media censorship and, notably, making key political decisions without consulting anybody.
In the meeting, Anan proposed a timetable for the military generals’ exit from power and the handover to an elected civilian president.
Anan also proposed some concessions, such as amending the electoral law in order to allow political parties to run for the one-third of parliamentary seats allocated for individual candidates, in addition to the other-two thirds devoted to a list-based system.
He also said that the SCAF is deliberating the idea of abolishing the Emergency Law and the amendment and application of the Treachery Law, which would criminalize various acts of political and financial corruption and the misuse of political power. Many revolutionary forces have been calling for the law to be implemented, as it would provide an opportunity to prosecute many members of the Mubarak regime.
Political powers and revolutionary groups have cast doubt over the proposed timetable, accusing the SCAF or trying to divide the political forces in the country.
On Friday, thousands of Egyptians flocked to Tahrir Square to protest against the SCAF and its insistence on applying the Emergency Law, which was used as a tool to suppress dissent under Mubarak.
Revoking the notorious law has been a core demand of revolutionaries, along with other demands that would pave the way to a democratic country, such as amending a controversial electoral law, accelerating the transitional period by holding the presidential elections immediately after the parliamentary poll, and placing a legal restriction on former members of the National Democratic Party (NDP) running for political office for a number of years.
Anan’s concessions, however, are not enough for many activists.
“The SCAF didn’t make any concessions. They amended the electoral law, which was widely criticized by the whole political spectrum. So this isn’t a concession. It a return to the normal standard,” said Tarek al-Malt, spokesman of the Wasat Party, a moderate Islamist party.
Critics also say that having a document signed by 13 political parties doesn’t represent the whole political spectrum.
On Saturday, a number of political movements and parties that were excluded from the meeting sharply criticized the military council.
They said that most of the parties invited to the meetings were "cartoonish," and did not participate in the revolution.
Ahmed Maher, the coordinator of the April 6 Youth Movement, fiercely criticized the political parties that accepted the SCAF’s invitation, saying they were the same parties that supported Safwat al-Sherif, former secretary general of the NDP, before the revolution.
He added that most of these parties used to attack the young protest movements before the revolution.
Some political forces such as the hardline Islamist Jama'a al-Islamiya said that the SCAF is being too selective inviting groups for talks.
Tarek al-Zomor, spokesman of the Jama'a al-Islamiya told Al-Masry Al-Youm that “most of the political parties are losing faith in the SCAF, which insists on not revoking the Emergency Law.”
"The SCAF is running the country in the same way that Mubarak did,” he added.
Furthermore, the document has caused division between political parties that have a religious background, since it gives approval for the official declaration of "supra-constitutional" principles.
Presidential hopeful Mohamed ElBaradei was the first to call for adopting “supra-constitutional” principles in order to guarantee the civil nature of the state. Major Islamist forces, notably the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi movement, have sharply rejected the idea.
However, the document signed in Saturday’s meeting states that the signatories agree to draft a separate document outlining “supra-constitutional principles,” as well as criteria by which to select members of the committee responsible for drafting the upcoming constitution.
That the Freedom and Justice Party and Salafi Nour Party agreed to these principles could be a problem for the parties’ grassroots, who reject the idea having pre-determined principles for the constitution.
“This is a major setback for those parties, since they didn’t consult their grassroots over this core issue. Islamic forces have agreed on rejecting any pre-prepared constitutional principles. The constitution should be drafted by the committee after electing the parliament,” said Malt.
Some political parties that signed the document have faced quick internal divisions.
The document included a paragraph that says that the signatories declare their full support for the SCAF and they appreciate its role in protecting the revolution.
The Adl Party only signed the document after wide internal criticism, leading to the resignation of around 30 members. Mostafa al-Naggar, the party’s representative at Saturday’s meeting, later wrote on his Twitter account that he retracted his approval of the document.
Mohamed Abu Alela, a member of the Arab Democratic Nasserist Party, also attended the meeting and signed the document. However, the party's chairman, Sameh Ashour, issued a statement on Sunday, saying that his party had not officially attended the meeting and that Abu Alela had not been authorized to represent the party, making his signature void.
