Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) has ruled that the Shura Council, the Islamist-dominated upper house of Egypt’s parliament and only legislative body, was illegally elected. The decision, which comes amid plummeting popularity for the country’s Muslim Brotherhood-linked president Muhammad Morsi, may further undermine the government’s political legitmacy:
An activist campaign claims to have collected millions of signatures on a petition demanding Morsi leave office. The organizers plan a massive rally outside the presidential palace on June 30 to mark a year since his inauguration as Egypt’s first freely elected president. “We are paying dearly for the legislative and constitutional absurdity of the Muslim Brotherhood,” said prominent commentator and Brotherhood critic Abdullah el-Sinawy. “It is a situation that threatens political problems and dilemmas on the road ahead.”
The court appeared to accept the legitimacy of the Constitution itself, though the ruling is likely to strengthen the arguments of those who say that Islamists dominated the constitutional process and ignored the views of many Egyptians. “From a legal point of view, and from a legitimacy point of view, this ruling will weaken the Morsi administration,” said Emad Shahin, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo.
Ziad Akl, a senior analyst at the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, contextualized the decision:
“The Shura Council was a vulgar display of power for the Muslim Brotherhood. The real problem here is what this will mean for the political weight of the Brotherhood because the council they once controlled has been ruled void.” … “This is a big legal and constitutional mess, we now have become void of a valid, unanimously agreed-upon legal body that makes laws in Egypt…”
The Shura Council will remain in power until a new parliament is elected, though a date for those elections has not yet been set.
Analysts were quick to distinguish the decline in Morsi’s legitimacy and credibility from electoral scenarios that would see the Muslim Brotherhood thrown out of power. Polling suggests that there are few if any credible opponents to Morsi’s government likely to win an election.
[Photo: Ahmad Badr / Wiki Commons]
