(AFP Photo)
Early presidential elections would destroy democracy, said Assistant to the President on Foreign Relations and International Cooperation Essam Al-Haddad.
The presidential assistant welcomed the peaceful aspect of demonstrations on 30 June in a statement on Sunday night, calling it “another day of democratic practice that we all cherish.”
Al-Haddad added that the protests “are motivated by their rejection of specific policies or outcomes of the government or by the perceptions of the attitude of this government.” He added that while they represented a range of grievances, protesters had not agreed on “specific solutions” to those grievances.
“More importantly,” Al-Haddad continued, “the opposition to President Morsi’s government has not been able to specify the mechanisms by which such [an] agreement may be developed.”
The assistant presented three ways in which change could come about. The first option, he said, is through parliamentary elections. Through a House of Representatives, Al-Haddad argued, the opposition could potentially allow for early presidential elections if the legislative body could not agree with the president on a prime minister. This path, in his opinion, was the “most obvious way for Egyptians to bring about all the changes they seek.”
Al-Haddad said the second option was to build consensus through national dialogue, and criticised the opposition for rejecting offers from the president to do so on multiple occasions.
The third way was through demanding early presidential elections through demonstrations, which he considered would: “simply destroy…democracy.”
“Most importantly, there has not been a single coherent proposal that addresses how a stable legitimacy could be acquired by any government after this point,” he said.
“I believe we can come together to find a way that builds our country, not one that destroys our democracy,” said Al-Haddad.
The presidency is ready to do anything to return stability to the country as permitted by the law and constitution, said presidential spokesman Omar Amer in a Sunday night press conference.
He also called preconditions before dialogue between opposition and the presidency “unacceptable” in light of the current crisis.
