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Monday, June 18, 2012

Dispatches From Cairo: The Dream Dissolves

Candidate Ahmed Shafiq is the beneficiary of an
Egyptian court ruling that appears to have cleared
his path to the presidency.
  
CAIRO—And checkmate. Game over? 
Thursday afternoon, 98 degrees in the spring shade in Cairo, three days before the final presidential runoff election, and the entire Islamist-led Parliament has just been dissolved by a court ruling.

The decision included the invalidation of the temporary constitution and the committee assigned to write the new one, and it returns all legislative powers to the military.

This “soft coup,” as it is now being called, is based on rulings that the election of one-third of the Parliament’s seats and the Political Disenfranchisement Law, which was proposed to disallow the candidacy of members of the deposed government, were both unconstitutional. The lower and upper houses of the Parliament are now null and void, as is the constitution committee.
The original law passed by the Parliament banning members of former President Hosni Mubarak’s government from candidacy was intended to prevent the powerful elite network of his regime from reinstating his government. This law was appealed and set aside to enable Ahmed Shafiq—a Mubarak loyalist, a former air force general, a former minister of aviation and a onetime interim prime minister—to run. Considered for years a possible alternative to Mubarak’s son as successor in an autocratic, one-party system, Shafiq was promoted as a military strongman who could reimpose order and save the country from Islamist theocracy.

CAIRO—And checkmate. Game over? 
Thursday afternoon, 98 degrees in the spring shade in Cairo, three days before the final presidential runoff election, and the entire Islamist-led Parliament has just been dissolved by a court ruling.

The decision included the invalidation of the temporary constitution and the committee assigned to write the new one, and it returns all legislative powers to the military.

This “soft coup,” as it is now being called, is based on rulings that the election of one-third of the Parliament’s seats and the Political Disenfranchisement Law, which was proposed to disallow the candidacy of members of the deposed government, were both unconstitutional. The lower and upper houses of the Parliament are now null and void, as is the constitution committee.
The original law passed by the Parliament banning members of former President Hosni Mubarak’s government from candidacy was intended to prevent the powerful elite network of his regime from reinstating his government. This law was appealed and set aside to enable Ahmed Shafiq—a Mubarak loyalist, a former air force general, a former minister of aviation and a onetime interim prime minister—to run. Considered for years a possible alternative to Mubarak’s son as successor in an autocratic, one-party system, Shafiq was promoted as a military strongman who could reimpose order and save the country from Islamist theocracy.   READ MORE



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