Mona Makram Ebeid :: NET2 News

The Shura Council’s general committee on Tuesday made new appointments to the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR), Egypt’s governmental watchdog, choosing mostly members with an Islamist background.

The NCHR was formerly dominated by the now dissolved National Democratic Party. The regime of ousted President Hosni Mubarak used the council to polish its tarnished record of human rights abuses.

The committee appointed Judge Hossam al-Gheriany, the current head of the Constituent Assembly who is known to have Brotherhood sympathies, as the acting head of the NCHR. Socialist Popular Alliance Party member Abdel Ghaffar Shokr was named as Gheriany’s deputy.

Many members are known for their Islamist orientation, including former presidential candidate for the Salafi Asala Party Abdullah al-Ashal, former Salafi Nour Party MPs Talat Marzouk and Abdallah Badran, and pro-Brotherhood preacher Safwat Hegazy. Muslim Brotherhood leaders Mohamed al-Beltagy, Mahmoud Ghozlan, Mohamed Tosoun and Hoda Abdel Moneim, as well as the group’s lawyer Abdel Moneim Abdel Maqsoud, were also appointed to the council.

Other figures appointed to the NCHR are doctor and writer Amire Abouel Fotouh, Constituent Assembly member Ehab al-Kharrat, economic expert Abdel Khaleq Farouk, former MP Marian Malak, lawyer Fahmy al-Damati, and Coptic activist and professor Mona Makram Ebeid. Activists Ahmed Harara, Mohamad Zarea, Tarek Mouawad, Hanna Gerges, Ahmed Seif al-Islam and Wael Khalil were also named to the council.

The NCHR’s secretary-general will be elected among the 25 members or be appointed from outside the council in accordance with its established law, sources at the Freedoms and Justice Party said.

The Free Egyptians Party criticized the new formation of the council. Free Egyptians Party spokesperson Ahmed Khairy questioned the council’s criteria for selection.

“The Shura Council’s choices reveal how absurd it is. When it chooses Safwat Hegazy as a member of the National Council for Human Rights, it definitely does not know what it is doing,” said Khairy.

The Wafd Party’s executive bureau recommended in a meeting late Monday that the party should withdraw from the constituent assembly.

The recommendation, made at the end of the meeting chaired by party leader Al-Sayed al-Badawy, will be submitted late Tuesday to the party’s parliamentary bloc and supreme board. Both will make a final decision on the issue, the party newspaper’s website said.

Parliament elected four Wafd members to the 100-member panel tasked with drafting the new constitution: MP Mahmoud al-Saqqa, MP Mohamed Dawoud, MP Margaret Azar and Badawy.

Wafd has 39 MPs in the People’s Assembly. It came in third after the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party and the Salafi-oriented Nour Party, which together hold nearly two-thirds of the seats.

The party’s withdrawal would be significant for the panel, since it is the major secular political faction in the country.

As of Monday, five political parties and at least 14 secular public figures, including prominent politicians like independent MP Amr Hamzawy and Coptic activist Mona Makram Ebeid, had announced their withdrawal from the constituent assembly, with most saying they cannot participate in a body that represents only one political faction in Egyptian society.

Badawy had told Al-Masry Al-Youm on Monday that Wafd would hold a series of meetings to settle on a position concerning the constituent assembly.

He warned then that the formation of the constitutional panel had irritated all political forces, and stressed that the constitution cannot be solely laid down by the parliamentary majority.

Tags: Margaret Azar, Salafi-oriented Nour Party, Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, the People's Assembly, Mohamed Dawoud

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