Egypt’s highest court ruled on Sunday that the nation’s interim parliament was illegally elected, though it stopped short of dissolving the chamber immediately, in a decision likely to fuel the tensions between the ruling Islamists and the judiciary.
The Supreme Constitutional Court also ruled that a 100-member panel that drafted the new constitution was illegally elected.
The ruling deals a political blow to Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, but on the ground little will change, analysts say.
The upper house of parliament, called the Shura Council, which is dominated by the Islamists, will remain in place until elections are held for a lower house, likely early next year.
The constitution, which was ratified in a nationwide referendum in December last year with a relatively low turnout of around 35 percent, will also remain in effect.
Still, the opposition said the verdict shows how Islamists’ victories at the ballot box are tainted.
They said the ruling further challenges the legitimacy of the disputed constitution, which was pushed through the panel by Islamists allied to Morsi.
The two sides are squaring off for what may be a major confrontation on the streets by the end of this month.
An activist campaign claims to have collected millions of signatures on a petition demanding that Morsi leave office.
The organizers plan a massive rally outside the presidential palace on June 30 to mark a year since Morsi’s inauguration as Egypt’s first freely elected president.
“All sides will find what they want in this ruling,” said political analyst Hassan Nafea, a professor at Cairo University.
The opposition will be encouraged by the ruling to continue attacking the Islamists’ grip on power, “but concretely it doesn’t change anything,” Nafea said.
Egypt’s independent daily al-Tahrir summed up the impact of the judgement in its front-page headline yesterday: “Everything is invalidated, everything carries on.”
Emad El-Din Hussein, a columnist for the independent daily al-Shorouk yesterday said Morsi and the Islamists are not happy with the ruling, “but at least they got the results on the ground they wanted — which is that the Shura Council remains in place, despite its invalidation.”
“The ruling gave the opposition a strong card, it removed the [Islamists’] political legitimacy, which is likely to worry the Islamists and those in power,” Hussein said.
On Sunday, prominent commentator and Brotherhood critic Abdullah el-Sinawy said the ruling threatens political problems and dilemmas on the road ahead.
Morsi’s backers in the Muslim Brotherhood said the ruling implicitly acknowledged the legitimacy of the Shura Council and the constitution because it stopped short of trying to outright abrogate either.
“The ruling turns the page of media controversy over the Shura Council and the constitution,” Brotherhood spokesman Ahmed Aref said. “We hope that we never see that page again.”
The ruling, according to senior Brotherhood leader Essam el-Aryan, amounted to “an admission that the constitution came with the will of the people and through a free and clean referendum.”
The Supreme Constitutional Court dissolved the Islamist-majority lower house of parliament in June last year.
In both rulings, the court ruled that the law governing the election of each house of parliament breached principles of fairness because it allowed political parties to run for the third of seats that had been set aside for independent candidates.
Additional reporting by AFP
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