(AFP File Photo)
Novelist and Political Science Professor Ezzedine Choukri Fishere set an initiative for national reconciliation. The seven-point-initiative, which includes a stepping-down announcement by former President Mohamed Morsi, was listed in a statement issued by Fishere on Saturday.
The first point in the initiative states that Morsi should announce stepping down as president upon popular demand, as of 1 July 2013.
“[Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed] Badie should announce the disbanding of the Brotherhood group and should also disclose the group’s sources of local and foreign funding and how they were used,” the second point stated.
The initiative’s third point asks Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, to pledge their commitment to the concept of equality between citizens and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It also asks the FJP to review its political programme to omit points that oppose these concepts and commit to expelling party members who do not abide by them.
Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guidance Bureau and FJP leaders should apologise to the Egyptian people for “what they have done in the previous three years: violating the citizens’ rights and freedoms, not keeping their promises, violating the constitutional rules they were elected upon and standing against popular will on 30 June,” the fourth point stated.
In the fifth point, Fishere asked for the release of Brotherhood members who did not participate in “killings, violence or inciting violence”.
The Political Science professor, who is also the rapporteur of the state-formed Committee to Protect the Democratic Path, suggested the amendment of the Political Rights Law in order to ban “anyone who calls for inequality or disrupting the citizens’ rights”. He suggested, in the initiative’s sixth point, that the released Brotherhood members have the right to freely engage in the political process after the law has been amended.
“All acts of violence that happened since January 2011 should be investigated in the context of proper transitional justice,” Fishere’s seventh point read.
According to Fishere’s statement, several initiatives, such as the ones set by Morsi before his ousting, and previously by Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya and Islamist lawyer Mohamed Selim Al-Awa, were all rejected by political powers for being “unbalanced and disrespectful of popular will”.
“So as not to be in the position of rejection without having a positive contribution to a possible solution, it was [my] duty to put a more balanced initiative, which might contribute in healing the rift, stopping the bloodshed and re-integrating all of the Egyptian people on the path of a safe democratic transition,” Fishere’s statement read.
Fishere, the author of the novel Bab Al-Kheroog (The Exit Door), is also a substitute member of the Constituent Assembly.
Shaaban Abdel Aleem, leading figure of the Islamist Al-Nour Party, expected that the Brotherhood will not accept such an initiative, saying that it involves “humiliation of a certain faction; the Brotherhood would say that they would prefer imprisonment to adopting such an initiative”.
Egyptian Social Democratic Party spokesman Atef Adly announced the party’s rejection of the initiative. “We agree to societal reconciliation, but all the Brotherhood wants is to re-engage in the political process, the thing that we refuse,” he said.
FJP Media Coordinator and Anti-Coup Alliance member Mostafa Al-Khatib said that the alliance has not formed an opinion about the initiative yet. “My personal opinion is that anybody who aims at reconciliation based on constitutional legitimacy should come and sit with [the alliance],” he said, adding that they support initiatives aiming at reconciliation given that they “respect constitutional legitimacy”
The Anti Coup Alliance announced on Saturday an exit strategy to end the current “political crisis” by calling for “deep dialogue” with revolutionary forces, parties and national figures.
The dialogue as proposed by the alliance will focus on “how to get out of the current crisis and end the military rule” and “agreeing on future arrangements needed to create a modern democratic nation after breaking the coup.”
This call for dialogue was widely rejected by political powers.
