CAIRO: Egypt s consultative council on Sunday approved the two-year postponement of municipal polls that had been due within two months, in a move slammed by the opposition Muslim Brotherhood. The postponement now has to be approved by parliament to take effect. The Shura council, the country s upper chamber of parliament, approved a proposal by President Hosni Mubarak that the elections be delayed by two years and the mandate of the current municipal elections to be extended. The postponement was necessary to draft a new law on municipal administration which would conform to the constitutional amendment proposed by President Mubarak in his programme, said Shura speaker and ruling National Democratic Party Secretary General Safwat El-Sherif. The mandate of Egypt s municipal officials was due to expire on April 15 and elections were to have organised within a two-month period before that date. The country s Islamists, who achieved spectacular gains in parliamentary elections last year, charged the move was aimed at undermining their rise and preventing them from fielding a candidate in the next presidential poll. The NDP and government are afraid of losing their influence to the Islamists in the municipal elections. They are afraid because Egyptians know that there is an alternative, said brotherhood spokesman Issam al-Aryan. Their fear grew after Hamas s victory (in the Palestinian elections last month) and they are chiefly afraid that an independent candidate could run for president, Aryan told AFP. According to a constitutional amendment proposed by Mubarak and approved by referendum in May 2005, a legal party must control five percent of parliament to field a candidate in a presidential election. Yet the only opposition movement to have achieved significant representation in parliament is the Muslim Brotherhood, which is still officially illegal and fielded its parliamentary candidates as independents. The same amendment stipulates that an independent candidate must gather signatures from 250 elected officials, including 65 members of the People s Assembly, 25 Shura members and 10 municipal council members from at least 14 out of Egypt s 26 provinces. The amendment had been interpreted as an attempt to bar the Muslim Brotherhood but its spectacular surge in the November-December polls have left the Islamist movement in a better position than expected to meet the criteria. AFP
Egypt poised to delay local polls, Islamists cry foul
