Archive for Hatem Bagato

Supreme Constitutional Court convenes, with fewer judges

by admin
December 27th, 2012

The Supreme Constitutional Court convened its general assembly for the first time Thursday following the removal of seven judges as mandated by the recently approved constitution.

Article 233 of the new Constitution, which was officially approved on Tuesday, stipulates that the 10 longest-serving judges among its members make up the court, in addition to the current president. Previously the court's bench was comprised of 18 judges, some of whom are being reassigned to their previous positions.

Six members have returned to their previous jobs for other courts: Hamdan Fahmy, Ragab Selim, Mahmoud Ghoneim and Hatem Bagato as commissioners for the Supreme Constitutional Court, Hassan Badrawy  to the Court of the Cassation and Polas Fahmy to the Cairo Court of Appeals. The seventh former judge, Tahani al-Gebali, who worked as a lawyer before her appointment to the court, resumed her legal practice.  

A government source told Al-Masry Al-Youm he expects the Shura Council to pass a law delineating the powers of the Supreme Constitutional Court. The source added that this would not affect the cases currently being considered by the court.

Morsy supporters, who have staged sporadic demonstrations this month to pressure the court not to dissolve the Shura Council or the Constituent Assembly, ended their sit-in on Tuesday after the official referendum results were announced.  

The court has been in confrontation with ruling Islamists since it issued a verdict in June dissolving the Islamist-dominated lower house of Parliament, ruling that sections of the parliamentary elections law were unconstitutional.  

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm

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Voters who abstained from election may face fines

by admin
June 27th, 2012

The Presidential Elections Commission may push for fines against eligible voters who did not cast ballots in the presidential runoff on 16 and 17 June.

The electoral body said Tuesday it is reviewing voter lists and considering referring those who boycotted the election to prosecutors for investigation.

Voting in Egypt is mandatory and anyone who violates the law on exercising political rights could be fined LE100 if they do not have a legally acceptable reason for participating.

Of nearly 51 million eligible voters, just over 26.4 million, or 51.85 percent, took part in the runoff between Mohamed Morsy and Ahmed Shafiq, the commission announced Sunday. Throughout the election groups of activists promoted boycott campaigns in protest. 

Elections commission Secretary General Hatem Bagato said the commission is drafting a detailed report about the election process that can be submitted to any committee that supervises future elections.

Bagato told Al-Masry Al-Youm that there is a problem with the existing system of judicial election oversight, and advocated for establishing a permanent commission of judges who can dedicate themselves to this task.

He also suggested methods other than having a judge supervising each ballot box, such as the use of subcommittees in polling stations.   

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm

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SCC doesn’t yet know where Morsy will swear oath, says spokesperson

by admin
June 25th, 2012

 

The Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) has not yet been notified if President-elect Mohamed Morsy will be sworn in before the court's general assembly as stipulated by last week's supplement to the Constitutional Declaration, said spokesperson Maher Samy on Monday.

The ruling military council has vowed to hand over power to the incoming president by 30 June.

Samy expects that the president will be sworn in Monday in front of 18 councilors and members of the general assembly, including SCC head Farouk Sultan, his deputies and Hatem Bagato, the secretary general of the Presidential Elections Commission.  

"It is not in the interest [of the country] to postpone the oath for a long time," said Samy, adding that he expects the court be notified by Saturday. "The president will have no legitimacy before he takes the oath," he added.

State-run newspaper Al-Ahram said that the military council will hand over power to Morsy after he takes the oath in front of the SCC.

Military council head Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi will preside over the ceremony in a military hall.

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm

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Electoral fraud suspected in Saudi and South Africa

by admin
June 11th, 2012

The Presidential Elections Commission on Monday said it received complaints about alleged electoral fraud during expatriate voting in the presidential runoff election in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Pretoria, South Africa.

Complaints included the lack of private voting booths and attempts by administrators and others to influence voters as they were filling out their ballots.

Former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq and Mohamed Morsy, the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, are competing in the runoff on 16 and 17 June.

Elections commission Secretary General Hatem Bagato said the ballots cast by voters abroad would be sent to Egypt in sealed envelopes to be opened in Cairo.

Bagato also said that no candidate, including those who lost in the first round, has so far been found to have received illegal foreign funding, and that they all sent statements of their campaign spending to the elections commission.

He explained that two polling stations would be added for the runoff, bringing the total to 13,099 stations nationwide.

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm

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Maher al-Beheiry to replace Sultan as head of constitutional court

by admin
May 30th, 2012

The general assembly of Egypt’s influential Supreme Constitutional Court has agreed to appoint judge Maher al-Beheiry as its chairman, succeeding Farouk Sultan, whose term ends on 30 June.

State-owned MENA news service quoted Hatem Bagato, head of the commissioners at the Supreme Constitutional Court, as saying that the court’s general assembly selected Beheiry, the first deputy of the president of the court, to succeed Sultan.

Beheiry, 69, joined the Constitutional Court in 1991. This means that he is the longest-serving judge in the court, which is currently made up of 19 judges.

Sultan joined the court in 2009.

According to Law 43/2011, the court’s general assembly should choose one of the three longest-serving deputies to be the president of the court.

The decision will be ratified by either Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi or the country's new president, Bagato said.

The main task of the court is to determine the constitutionality of the laws issued by the legislature. The president of the court is also the head of the Presidential Elections Commission. 

In the last two decades, the court has exerted significant political influence. In 2000, it ruled that the judiciary should oversee the whole electoral process, which enabled the Muslim Brotherhood to win 20 percent of seats in Parliament in 2005.

In 2007, the article about judicial supervision was removed from the constitution.

Judge Awad Almor, head of the court from 1991 to 1998, had issued several verdicts that challenged the Mubarak regime. His successor Waley Aldin Galal followed Almor in issuing verdicts that stress democratic values and human rights.

Mubarak later adopted a strategy in which he picked what commentators described as a loyal judge from outside the court to be head of the court.

Currently, two major laws before the court could have deep political influence. One of them is the elections law, which if ruled unconstitutional, will dissolve the current Islamist-dominated Parliament.                                  

The second is the law barring former regime figures, such as Ahmed Shafiq, from running in the presidential election.

It is noteworthy that Beheiry is the judge who ruled in April that the court has no right to review a draft amendment to the political rights law that would isolate regime figures because it cannot review a law unless it is already enforced.

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Constitutional court names new leader

by admin
May 30th, 2012

Hatem Bagato, head of the commissioners at the Supreme Constitutional Court, said the court’s general assembly selected Maher al-Beheiry to succeed its president, Farouk Sultan, when his term ends on 30 June.

Beheiry, who was Sultan's first deputy, was chosen by consensus from among the court's three longest-serving deputies, Bagato told Al-Masry Al-Youm.

The assembly decision will be ratified by either Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi or the country's new president, Bagato said.

Beheiry was selected according to Law 43/2011, Bagato said.

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
 

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Election commission denies Shafiq in first, weighs electoral appeals

by admin
May 27th, 2012

 

The secretary general of the Presidential Elections Commission has denied rumors that Ahmed Shafiq garnered the most votes in the first round of the election held last week.

“The counting is not yet complete,” Hatem Bagato told the website of the state-run newspaper Al-Ahram on Sunday, saying that the final results would not be announced before considering the five appeals submitted by presidential candidates.

On Sunday, the election commission began to review the complaints over the poll, which has left Egyptians with a runoff choice between an Islamist apparatchik, Mohamed Morsy, and throwback candidate from the Hosni Mubarak era, Ahmed Shafiq.

Both contenders seek to claim the mantle of the 25 January revolution, and are appealing to the many Egyptians who voted for more centrist figures in the first round.

Bagato said the commission was investigating complaints filed by four candidates — Shafiq, leftist Hamdeen Sabbahi, moderate Islamist Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh and former Arab League chief Amr Moussa.

"The [election] results will be announced on Monday or Tuesday at the latest," Bagato told Reuters by telephone.

But Sabbahi, who in came a close third in the first round, challenged the results. "We have information that [military and police] conscripts voted illegally," he told a raucous crowd of supporters in Cairo late on Saturday.

Former US President Jimmy Carter said he was broadly confident about the voting process. But his Carter Center monitors highlighted several irregularities, notably their lack of access to the final aggregation of national results.

The polarized outcome has even led to suggestions from a range of liberal and other politicians — swiftly rejected by the Brotherhood — that Morsy should withdraw to allow Sabbahi to go through to the second round.

"This is unconstitutional," Essam al-Erian, a leader of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, said in reference to the calls for withdrawal. He added that if Morsy quit at this stage, Shafiq would win by default.

An unnamed FJP source said the Brotherhood believed vote rigging had helped Shafiq qualify for the second round, but that the group had decided not to complain for fear that the election might be invalidated and that a re-run could endanger Morsy’s chances.

The source said he believed this was a mistake, because it meant the Brotherhood was failing to show solidarity with other groups and that it would have no credibility if it chose to appeal the runoff result next month.

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Maspero victim’s family finds name registered in voter database

by admin
May 20th, 2012

The family of Mina Daniel, a Coptic man killed in violence outside the Maspero state television building last year, found his name on a registered voters list for the presidential election set for Wednesday and Thursday.

The polling station where his name was found was located at the Ezbet al-Nakhl Youth Center in Cairo.

Sherry Daniel, the victim’s sister, said her family found his name while checking the Presidential Elections Commission’s website to find out how to cast their ballots.

“We entered Mina’s ID number and were amazed to find his name was there,” she said.

“It made us pretty sure that the elections will be fair,” she added ironically.

Daniel’s family sarcastically called on all of his friends and loved ones to see Mina while they voted. They said “the Presidential Elections Commission doesn’t know about the Maspero incident.”

In a Saturday press conference, commission Secretary General Hatem Bagato said death certificates with complete voter data should be provided to the commission so it can remove the names of deceased voters from the database. He also called on judges supervising the polling stations to check every voter’s identification.

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm

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Elections commission lays out rules for upcoming presidential race

by admin
May 20th, 2012

The Presidential Elections Commission has designated one judge per ballot box to oversee the polling stations for the election scheduled to start Wednesday, commission Secretary General Hatem Bagato said.

Bagato said at a news conference Saturday that there will be some difficulties with polling stations in distant areas with only dozens of voters.

He said the commission believes in the role of media and civil society in the elections. He said 2,859 members of the media have obtained permission to cover the election.

Forty-nine local NGOs have obtained 9,534 election-monitoring permits, while three out of five foreign NGOs that applied have been granted 243 permits.

The commission has no interest in rigging the election, Bagato said, adding that the judges who will oversee the poll are the same ones who oversaw the parliamentary elections, which ended earlier this year.

More than 50 million voters are eligible to cast their ballots, with 6 million in Cairo and 4 million in Giza.

The biggest of the 351 general polling stations are located in Cairo and Sharqiya governorates, while the smallest are in Suez and New Valley.

A woman will be stationed in each polling place to verify the identities of female voters who wear face veils, Bagato said. Any voter who declines to show her face will be barred from voting.

Voters will not be allowed to take photos of ballot papers with cameras on their mobile phones, and violators would be subject to imprisonment and fines, he said.

Glass ballot boxes will be used and phosphoric ink has been imported from Denmark, he said.

The Arab League, African Union and the European Commission, as well as foreign embassies in Egypt, have been invited to send monitors to the election.

Electoral campaigning is banned inside and outside polling stations. Bagato said police and army forces would arrest anyone campaigning during the period of election silence.

Voters are not allowed to talk to the press inside polling stations, but judges can give statements to the press.

Bagato said the database of voters is reviewed and filtered by the judges, who obtain information from the Health Ministry and civil affairs authorities.

He added that if the name of a dead person is found in the lists of voters, the error would likely be due to a lack of information on his or her death certificate.

He emphasized that voter lists have been revised to filter out people who had died and others who are not eligible to vote.

Aside from voters, nobody is allowed into a polling station unless he or she carries a relevant permit or is a member of the Presidential Elections Commission.

People carrying signs that show which candidate they support will not be allowed into polling stations, he said.

Bagato said voters should choose only one presidential candidate, adding that making any additional marks on the ballot paper will invalidate their vote.

Edited translation from MENA

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Presidential Elections Commission invites candidates to meeting Tuesday

by admin
May 7th, 2012

The Presidential Elections Commission on Monday invited all presidential candidates to a meeting at 6 pm Tuesday.

The purpose of the meeting is to brief candidates on all procedures and preparations and to listen to their proposals, commission head Hatem Bagato said in a statement.

The commission is also holding the meeting to clear any obstacles and meet the legal demands put forward by candidates.

Judicial sources told Al-Masry Al-Youm that members of the commission will explain procedures that are being adopted for the first time in this election, such as having pictures of the candidates printed on the ballot papers, and other procedures intended to prevent vote rigging.

The same sources said changes have been made to the way voters sign their names, and copies of the results of the vote-counting process will be handed to the candidates' representatives, to conform with recent amendments to the presidential election law.

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm

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