Archive for Supreme Council of the Armed Forces

Parliamentary affairs minister resigns, rejects Cabinet’s policies

by admin
December 27th, 2012

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mohamed Mahsoub has resigned from Prime Minister Hesham Qandil’s Cabinet, he announced on Thursday.

Mahsoub said he submitted his resignation due to “policies which contradict my personal convictions, and which I do not see as reflecting our people’s aspirations after the revolution.”

“Among these policies, for example, is the issue of recovering looted funds,” Mahsoub said in the letter given to President Mohamed Morsy.

Mahsoub said in his letter that he had proposed a project to address this issue over three months ago but no action was taken, as it remains in the hands of the judicial committee formed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

The committee has not made any significant achievements in resolving this problem, Mahsoub claimed, meaning that Egypt may lose the right to recover these funds. This also causes the nation to lose its “prestige” before the nations that received those funds, and to lose credibility with its own people, he argued.

Mahsoub said he would seize this moment of change amid celebrations for the approval of the new Constitution to submit his resignation, wishing both the president and the Cabinet success in working for the interests of Egypt.

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm

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Categories Egypt, Egypt Top Stories
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Egyptian activist’s planned lecture in Israel sparks criticism

by admin
December 23rd, 2012

Arabic student movements at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem condemned Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil, who is due to give a lecture at the university on Sunday.

Groups representing Arab students demanded that all students boycott the lecture, entitled "Political Changes in Egypt and its Relationship with Israel."

The movements said that Nabil exploits the "honorable name of the Egyptian revolution” in his visit to “explain his positions and justify his despicable remarks against Palestinians, and our prisoners in particular.

"We firmly believe that brave women and men of the revolution condemn this disgraceful act, and only feel hatred toward him," a statement released by the student groups said.

Nabil plans to give another lecture before the conference of Jewish students on 31 December, and one more at Tel Aviv University on 2 January. He will also visit Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

The Harry S. Truman Institute for Peace at Hebrew University described Nabil as a "hero from Tahrir Square," praising him for being the Egyptian voice that speaks most openly about peace with Israel.

In December 2011, a military court sentenced Nabil to two years in prison and a fine of LE200 for insulting the Armed Forces, publishing false news and compromising public security in his blog posts. He was released in January 2012 as per a decree by the previously-ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which included 2,000 other civilians held by the military. 

Yara Saadi, a member of a Palestinian feminist student group at the university, told Al-Masry Al-Youm in a phone interview, "We will go to the lecture on Sunday to state our position in front of him and in front of everyone, and then we will withdraw."

"We consider Nabil a part of the normalization and bargaining that supports the theft and colonization of land, supports the suppression and displacement of the Palestinian people and ignores their rights," Saadi added. "His shameful opinions do not convince anyone who has basic information about the Arab-Zionist struggle.”

Egyptian activist Lobna Darwish said in a tweet: "The Maikel Nabil and Israel love affair is simply pathetic, shows how 30+ years of normalization didn't work, Israel has to cerebrate 1 ally."

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm

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Mansour Hassan, stalwart of former President Anwar Sadat’s regime, dies

by admin
December 22nd, 2012

 

Mansour Hassan, a veteran Egyptian politician who headed an advisory council to the once ruling military generals, passed away on Saturday. He was 75 years old.

His son Mohamed told Al-Masry Al-Youm that Hassan passed away Saturday afternoon, adding that the time of his funeral will be decided soon.

Hassan was born in 1937 and rose to become one of former President Anwar Sadat’s top aides in the 1970s. He was one of the main figures involved in founding the National Democratic Party in 1978. Sadat appointed him minister of information and culture in 1970 and minister of state for presidential affairs in 1981.

He was the chairman of the Advisory Council of Egypt between 8 September 2011 and 8 March 2012 and was close to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

Last March, he announced his intention to run in the first presidential elections after the fall of Mubarak, an announcement that was widely criticized by liberal and secular forces, due to his close ties with SCAF.

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Morsy to receive nominees for Shura Council on Friday

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December 20th, 2012

The National Dialogue Committee (NDC) has completed its final list of nominations for the Shura Council and plans to present it to President Mohamed Morsy on Friday.

The NDC was formed by the president in an attempt to appease political forces who oppose the draft constitution, and to bridge differences across the parties in the future of the political process.

According to the law, the nominations must be announced before the result of the constitutional referendum, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The president must appoint the 90 members to the upper house of Parliament within hours after receiving the list.

The second and final round of the referendum is scheduled for Saturday 22 December. If the draft is approved, legislative powers would be transferred from the president to the Shura Council until the People’s Assembly is elected.

The Shura Council will be composed of 279 members, a third of whom are to be appointed by the president.

The Shura Council is currently controlled by Islamists. In February 180 members were elected, while the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces declined to appoint the remaining 90 members during the transitional period before Morsy took office.

Members of the National Salvation Front were not nominated, the sources said, because Popular Front leader Hamdeen Sabbahi, Constitution Party leader Mohamed ElBaradei and Egyptian Congress Party leader Amr Moussa refused to be nominated or suggest others.

Nominees include Islamic preacher and Party of Egypt leader Amr Khaled and Ghad al-Thawra Party leader Ayman Nour. Also on the list are Gamal Gibril, the head of the Constituent Assembly’s political systems committee, and eight representatives of Egypt’s three churches.

Farid Ismail of the Freedom and Justice Party said the National Salvation Front is fostering political divisions by refusing to work with other political parties.

The NDC has allocated 55 seats in the council for political parties, 35 seats for public figures, eight seats for the Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican churches, five seats for Al-Azhar, 15 seats for the Freedom and Justice Party, nine seats for the Wasat Party, seven seats for the Ghad Party and 11 seats for the Nour Party.

It has also agreed that the council should not pass any law without holding a national dialogue.

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm

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Morsy may draw Shura Council nominees from non-Islamist groups

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December 19th, 2012

President Mohamed Morsy is set to appoint non-Islamist members to the Shura Council, which will begin legislating if the new constitution is approved.

According to the Constitutional Declaration of 2011, the upper house of Parliament is to be composed of two-thirds elected members and one-third presidential appointees.

Under the original declaration, the then-ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces was supposed to make the appointments using its temporary executive authority, but never did so.

The Turkish Anadolu news agency, citing sources close to the president’s office, reported Wednesday that Morsy has formed a committee, headed by Justice Minter Ahmed Mekky, to suggest appointees. Mekky's committee is insisting that appointed members be public figures, affiliated with new parties that are not already represented in the Shura Council, according to the news agency.

Last week, some attendees of Morsy’s “national dialogue” agreed not to nominate members of parties currently represented on the council, namely Islamist groups that have high representation such as the Freedom and Justice Party and the Salafi Nour Party.

The Freedom and Justice Party holds 45 percent of the elected council seats, while a Nour Party-led Salafi coalition holds 28.6 percent of the seats.

According to recommendations proposed by Mekky's committee, 10 seats will be reserved for legal experts and constitutional professors, as the body will have legislative authority after a new constitution comes into force until a new lower house is elected.

Parties that held more than 10 seats in the dissolved People’s Assembly, including the Free Egyptians and the Egyptian Socialist Democratic parties, will receive 12 seats on the council. Parties that held five to 10 seats such as the Wasat Party will receive seven seats, while parties that had less than five seats in the lower house, including Strong Egypt, the Popular Current and the Constitution Party, will be represented by two or three seats.

 

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Brotherhood refused meeting with defense minister, sources say

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December 14th, 2012

This week’s meeting between Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and political forces was cancelled due to pressure from President Mohamed Morsy’s administration, informed sources told Al-Masry Al-Youm on Friday. The Morsy administration denies the claims.

"The administration and President Mohamed Morsy pressed the Armed Forces to cancel the dialogue which was planned for last Wednesday because the Muslim Brotherhood and its [Freedom and Justice] Party refused to attend the meeting, considering it an intervention on part of the Armed Forces in political life," the sources said.

The call for the meeting came amidst rising polarization between Morsy and his opponents over the draft constitution. Opposition forces say the Constituent Assembly that wrote the draft was hijacked by Islamists.

The military institution has sent mixed signals about its position in the current crisis. The Armed Forces have issued intermittent statements saying they are with the Egyptian people, which some have read as a sign of solidarity with the opposition. Since the transitional period when the country was ruled by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, there has been an increasing rift between Islamist parties and the military.

Other analysts say that the draft constitution preserves the privileged position of the military, thus neutralizing its position in the current crisis.

"The dialogue was not postponed, but was cancelled. This is a great insult to Egyptians who appreciate the role of the Armed Forces, their patriotism and their sincere hope to maintain the unity of the community by reuniting the political forces without bias," the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper quoted sources as saying.

"The FJP was the first party to respond to the call of the defense minister for a 'humanitarian meeting' which links the people of the same family, and we did not mind attending. The defense minister should be asked for the reason behind postponement," said FJP leader Gamal Heshmat.

Heshmat claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood had nothing to do with the meeting’s cancellation.

"A number of political forces said that the Brotherhood postponed the dialogue, in an attempt to persuade the people that the Brothers are running the country and that the supreme guide interferes in the affairs of presidency, which is totally untrue. Those who claim something have to prove it," Heshmat added.

"Some parties want to insult and embarrass the administration through fabricated lies and rumors," he said.

Presidential spokesperson Yasser Ali denied that the administration exerted pressure to cancel the meeting.

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm

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Armed Forces arrest powers confined to referendum, spokesperson says

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December 13th, 2012

The arrest powers that the president granted this week to the military only apply at polling sites on the days of the constitution referendum, Armed Forces spokesperson Ahmed Mohamed Ali told Turkish news agency Anadolu Thursday.

The power to arrest civilians is “not absolute, but starts with the beginning of the referendum day and ends with it, and only in the polling stations,” he said.

President Mohamed Morsy’s decree Sunday ordered the military to assist police forces in keeping security and protecting vital establishments until the result of the referendum is announced. After activists and human rights groups raised concerns that the practice would revitalize military trials for civilians, a presidential statement on Tuesday said that any citizens arrested by the army during the referendum would be tried before a civilian court.

The referendum is scheduled to take place over the next two Saturdays, 15 and 22 December. Half of the nation’s provinces will vote on each day.

“The army is only responsible for securing citizens during the voting process, and does not extend beyond that, in order to face any cases of assaults against voters or attacks on polling stations,” Ali explained.

Ali denied that the law could empower any member of the Armed Forces to arrest a citizen regarding incidents unrelated to the electoral process.

“The army has nothing to do with politics, because that’s not our job,” Ali explained. “We want citizens to vote with safety.”

Civilians arrested by the military “would likely be referred to the Public Prosecution,” he said, unless there is an attack on Army members, in which case the aggressor would be referred to the military prosecution in accordance with the law.

Despite widespread objection to the practice, military trials of civilians were common during the interim rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

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Imminent decree to give Morsy more power over Central Bank

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December 11th, 2012

President Mohamed Morsy will issue a decree within days that would give him more power over Egypt’s Central Bank, according to a Tuesday report on the website of state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper.

By amending one of the statutes that govern the bank and its officials, Morsy will be able to appoint more of the bank’s board members. Under current law, the governor of the Central Bank is largely responsible for appointing the governing board’s members.

The decree, published on Al-Ahram’s website, will amend Central Bank Statute No. 64/2004, which specifies the membership of the bank’s governing board.  According to the Al-Ahram, Morsy has already obtained the Cabinet’s approval on the decree.

The decree will cut the number of board members to nine as opposed to 15 under the formal law, and gives the president the power to appoint at least four economic or monetary experts, in addition to ministry representatives and the governor.

The current law, issued in 2003 by former President Hosni Mubarak, also allowed the bank’s governor to appoint an unlimited number of deputies that would also sit on the board.

At the time of its issuance, the law was criticized for infringing on the bank’s independence.

By law, the Central Bank of Egypt is an independent entity with the power to devise and implement the general monetary objectives of the government. Like many central banks around the world, the bank is designed by law to be as independent as possible so that the state’s economic policy is not affected by changing political tides.

The CBE has largely maintained its independence throughout Egypt’s transitional period, during which the bank has been carefully managing the value of the country’s currency.

Despite the political upheaval and intense international market pressure for devaluation, the Egyptian pound has slowly and incrementally lost value, but there have been no dramatic drops.

On 11 December, the pound reached its lowest value in eight years of 6.1505 pounds to the dollar on and its total decline since the January 2011 uprising has been 5.4 percent, according to figures from the financial news service Bloomberg.

Considering the circumstances, some experts say that it has been a remarkable feat of currency management, one that earned CBE Governor Farouk al-Oqda the Euromoney award for best central bank governor in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011.

Oqda became governor of the Central Bank in December 2003, succeeding Mahmoud Abul-Eyoun. He was reappointed to a third four-year term last November by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

But the currency management has also meant that the bank has had to burn through approximately 58 percent of its total foreign currency reserves in the past year, according to Bloomberg. The bank has spent roughly US$1 billion per month in foreign reserves — mostly dollars — to buy up pounds and keep the value from slipping.

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Categories Egypt Economy
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Supreme Constitutional Court denies plot to overthrow Morsy

by admin
November 28th, 2012

The Supreme Constitutional Court has denied accusations by President Mohamed Morsy’s supporters that the court has been plotting to depose the Islamist president and has shown fealty to former President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.

Court president Maher al-Beheiry said in a press conference in Cairo on Wednesday that the accusations seek to “demoralize the court and taint its image.”

The court labeled accusations that it dissolved the Islamist-dominated People’s Assembly June in coordination with certain parties to bring down state institutions and overthrow Morsy’s regime “mere lies.”

“It is a false allegation to claim that court judges are selected based on specific political affiliations,” Beheiry added.

Islamists have slammed the court for the June verdict dissolving the assembly over the unconstitutionality of the parliamentary elections law, which allowed partisan candidates to vie for independent seats.

The court is also scheduled to rule on the constitutionality of the Constituent Assembly on 2 December. Several non-Islamist groups withdrew from the assembly to protest the draft of the new constitution and the writing process.

Muslim Brotherhood members have openly said that the 22 November constitutional declaration by Morsy is aimed at preempting “conspiracies” against the president. The decree immunized Morsy’s decrees from judicial challenges and protected the Shura Council and the Constituent Assembly from dissolution.

The Brotherhood said the alleged plots against the president include a possible ruling against the constitutionality of the constitutional addendum which Morsy issued in August to assume legislative powers and remove the formerly-ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces from the political scene. The Brotherhood members believe such a verdict would return the SCAF to power.

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Interior Ministry: 118 detained in Mohamed Mahmoud clashes

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November 21st, 2012

Security forces have arrested 118 protesters since Monday in ongoing clashes near the Ministry of Interior, the ministry said in a statement on its Facebook page Wednesday morning.

Those arrested will be interrogated about why they took part in the protests and who the instigators were, the statement said.

Clashes escalated Tuesday night near Mohamed Mahmoud and Youssef al-Guindi streets, which both link Tahrir Square to the ministry building. Protesters hurled Molotov cocktails at police and security forces, who answered with tear gas canisters.

The protesters were commemorating the anniversary of the November 2011 clashes that raged for days on Mohamed Mahmoud Street after police forces forcibly cleared the square of protesters demonstrating against the then-ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

At least 55 protesters and 37 police and security forces have been injured so far. Assistant Interior Minister Ahmed Helmy has said that no deaths have been reported.

Al-Masry Al-Youm had reported that 11 suspects involved in the incidents were detained for four days pending investigation, while 13 others were released and nine minors were sent back to their families.

Those arrested have been accused of rioting, assaulting police forces and damaging government facilities.

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