Tuesday’s meeting between Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi and political party leaders has made it to the front pages of local newspapers on Wednesday as part of the ongoing crisis between secular parties and Islamist forces on the structure of the constituent assembly.
Tantawi, head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, held a meeting with the heads of 18 political parties and two parliamentarians to discuss the recent developments on the political scene, reported the state-run daily Al-Ahram. According to the flagship paper, the military council urged the contending political forces to reach an agreement on the conflict over the assembly tasked with writing Egypt’s new constitution.
Eighteen secularists had withdrawn their membership from the constituent assembly as of Tuesday to protest its makeup, accusing Islamists of dominating the constituent assembly and excluding many sectors of society, as well as lacking transparency and clear criteria for selecting the committee’s members.
The State Council Administrative Court set 10 April as the date to rule on lawsuits challenging the validity of the constituent assembly based on the same claims or misrepresentation, Al-Ahram says, adding that a number of political forces organized “mass protests” by the court’s headquarters during the hearing.
In an attempt to discredit the lawsuit, the Freedom and Justice newspaper — operated by the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party, which holds a plurality of parliamentary seats — ran a story on its front page that describes the two lawyers leading the legal case, namely Shawky al-Sayed and Mortada Mansour, as being notorious for creating laws and legal loopholes to benefit cronies of the Mubarak regime.
The partisan newspaper also ran a front-page headline that reads, “No official withdrawals from the constituent assembly,” further downplaying the secularists’ outcry. Sami Mahran, the secretary general of People’s Assembly, said he didn’t receive any official withdrawal from members of the constituent assembly as of Tuesday afternoon, reports Freedom and Justice.
The state-run daily Al-Gomhurriya reported that secular political parties and revolutionary groups denied media reports about them calling on Wednesday for million-man marches from Tahrir Square to Parliament’s headquarters to denounce the constituent assembly.
Another issue making the public anxious is the Muslim Brotherhood’s decision over who it will support in the upcoming presidential election. However, the Brotherhood’s Shura Council meeting on Tuesday ended with more confusion, because it postponed the decision to next week. Newspaper reports on the meeting are nothing more than conflicting speculations based on anonymous sources.
The privately owned daily Al-Shorouk reported that despite leaked reports that the Islamist group will nominate FJP MP and People’s Assembly Speaker Saad al-Katatny as its candidate, an anonymous source told the newspaper that it is unlikely the group will field a candidate from its ranks. The source said the success of a Brotherhood candidate is not guaranteed because people have been critical of its performance in Parliament, adding that it deliberately leaked news about Katatny only to pressure SCAF into accepting the Brotherhood’s demands of dissolving the cabinet.
Al-Shorouk also quoteed a source from the FJP saying the party has backed down on its calls for withdrawing confidence from Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri’s cabinet, a demand that sparked deep conflict between the majority party and SCAF in the past few days, as the latter was resistant to yield their demands.
In addition, Katatny downplayed the recent SCAF-Brotherhood dispute, saying it was merely “a statement responding to another” and that there is no real conflict between them, as portrayed by some, reports Freedom and Justice newspaper.
During an honorary ceremony for the popular committee in Minya, Katatny said Parliament does not seek conflict with anyone.
On the contrary, privately owned Al-Dostour newspaper reported that the People’s Assembly will start making steps toward moving a no-confidence vote against the Ganzouri cabinet on Wednesday. Ashraf Thabet, deputy People’s Assembly speaker and head of the committee tasked with evaluating Ganzouri’s previous report on the cabinet, said Parliament is expected to reject the report, a move that is considered the first step toward the vote of no confidence.
Another symptom of the dispute between SCAF and the Brotherhood brewed in the People’s Assembly legislative committee Tuesday. Al-Dostour reported that a heated argument occurred between SCAF member General Mamdouh Shahin and MPs from the FJP. Shahin rejected FJP parliamentarian Hussein Ibrahim’s suggestion to amend the Military Justice Code by adding an article that allows a retrial for all those sentenced by Article 6 of the same law in a civilian court. Article 6 gives the president the power to transfer any legal case to the military judiciary.
Egypt’s papers:
Al-Ahram: Daily, state-run, largest distribution in Egypt
Al-Akhbar: Daily, state-run, second to Al-Ahram in institutional size
Al-Gomhurriya: Daily, state-run
Rose al-Youssef: Daily, state-run
Al-Dostour: Daily, privately owned
Al-Shorouk: Daily, privately owned
Al-Wafd: Daily, published by the liberal Wafd Party
Youm7: Daily, privately owned
Al-Tahrir: Daily, privately owned
Freedom and Justice: Daily, published by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party
Sawt al-Umma: Weekly, privately owned
Al-Arabi: Weekly, published by the Nasserist Party
Al-Nour: Official paper of the Salafi Nour Party
