The Freedom and Justice Party will have the right to appoint a new prime minister if Parliament withdraws confidence from the current cabinet, said the party chairman on Wednesday.
“The next prime minister should be from the FJP, and the ministers should be from political parties or independents, in order to form a technocratic cabinet,” said Mohamed Morsy, the chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, in a TV interview on Al-Hayat satellite channel.
Morsy said the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces wants to form a new cabinet according to the “same old mentality” of the former Mubarak regime, which Morsy said amounts to “a kind of tampering.”
“The mismanagement and failure to tackle [national] issues seriously led to the deterioration of conditions day after day, so everyone agreed that the [parliamentary] majority should take responsibility [for governing],” Morsy added. “The cabinet members feel they are temporary and do not issue incisive decisions to solve problems, so their trembling hands should be changed.
“The cabinet change is not about people, it is about policy,” he went on. “The one who takes responsibility will carry a heavy burden. We should have a cabinet that is held accountable for its [decisions] and represents the majority. The SCAF did not carry out its duties and change the cabinet and it should move to commission the [parliamentary] majority to form a cabinet.”
He stressed the FJP would continue pushing for current Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri’s cabinet to be dismissed.
Al-Masry Al-Youm quoted unidentified high-level government sources Tuesday as saying the SCAF is seeking a way to reconcile the cabinet with the People’s Assembly, hoping to calm the tensions that have arisen since foreign NGO workers accused of receiving illegal foreign funds were allowed to leave the country despite an apparent travel ban.
The sources, according to Al-Masry Al-Youm, said the SCAF wants to dismiss two ministers at most as a compromise, but the FJP has insisted on sacking the entire cabinet.
The Brotherhood suggested earlier that one of its deputy supreme guides, Khairat al-Shater, form a coalition cabinet representing all political parties in the Parliament, a proposal which the SCAF has rejected.
According to the March 2011 Constitutional Declaration, the SCAF is the sole authority with the right to form or disband a government.
Translated from Al-Masry Al-Youm
