By Mai Shams El-Din
CAIRO: A court order obliging the government to dissolve Egypt’s municipal councils should be applied in one month, the ruling judge said Tuesday.
However, some analysts are worried about a law stipulating that new elections be held in 60 days.
The Supreme Administrative Court ruled on Tuesday to dissolve municipal councils around the country, one of the demands of the revolution.
Head of the Administrative Courts Judge Kamal El-Lamie, who issued the verdict, told Al-Jazeera Mubasher Misr that Cabinet is obliged to implement the court order in one month, “and I think that the government will implement it in a matter of days.”
Dissolving municipal councils was one of the main demands of the January 25 Revolution that toppled Egypt’s strongman Hosni Mubarak. Known for their corruption — with the admission of leading figures of the former regime — many warned that municipal councils could be used to bolster support for members of the former regime in upcoming parliamentary elections.
A major rally is planned next week to push for the municipal councils to be abolished, among other things.
But on Tuesday, the verdict wasn’t warmly received by all.
Professor of local administration at Cairo University Houda Mansour told Daily News Egypt that the government will be required to call for council elections in 60 days.
Parliamentary elections are scheduled for September and presidential soon to follow.
“Elections for local municipal councils were scheduled to take place next year, now after dissolving them; I doubt we will be ready for elections in 60 days,” Mansour said.
“The roadmap is still not clear. We still do not know how the new municipal administration law will look, and we do not know if governors will be appointed or elected, in addition to the argument over the constitution and the elections,” she added.
Some political forces have suggested postponing the September elections in order to draft Egypt’s new constitution first.
El-Lamie said it is up to the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the Cabinet to decide on a date to call for elections, explaining that the Administrative Court cannot decide this.
Mansour said freezing the activities of municipal councils could have been more effective than their complete dissolution.
“Freezing the councils’ activities would be better until the roadmap is clear, especially that their official holiday is July and August, which will be during the campaigning of the parliamentary elections,” she said.
Member of National Association for Change and political science professor Hassan Nafaa disagreed, describing municipal councils elections as “an important step in the Egyptian political life.”
“This decision is very important and should be immediately implemented, but we have to put into consideration that many court orders were not executed by the former regime,” Nafaa told DNE.
“This court order is definitely a test for the current government and the ruling military council,” he said, explaining that not implementing the verdict would mean that the government of Prime Minsiter Essam Sharaf “does not want to run the transition according to the revolutionary legitimacy and is still using the mindset of the collapsed regime.”
The Administrative Court’s decision is not final, and the government has the right to appeal, according to the lawyer who filed the case, Ahmed Fadaly.
“I hope the government does not appeal the court order because I think the government should not associate itself with such a corrupt system belonging to the legacy of the dissolved National Democratic Party,” Fadaly told DNE.
Many speculate that dissolving municipal councils is not enough and that it should be followed by freezing the political activities of its elected members accused of corruption to avoid the rebirth of remnants of the NDP.
The former regime had postponed the municipal elections two years to avoid a repeat of the 2005 parliamentary elections that saw the Muslim Brotherhood win 88 seats. Members of the councils were chosen in 2008 in elections said to be widely rigged in favor of the former regime. Mubarak’s NDP took almost 99 percent of the vote on a tiny turnout.
“I never requested to freeze political activities of NDP members in this case or in the case to dissolve the NDP, because we cannot generalize in corruption allegations, especially that we have over 54,000 elected members in these councils,” Fadaly added.
“Those allegations should be investigated in detail, and then the judiciary will have the final word,” he said.
Judge El-Lamie said in a TV interview that municipal councils became illegal after the revolution and the new constitutional declaration amended by the SCAF.
“We followed what happened earlier in the municipal councils, where the personal interests of those who were elected overweighed the national interests and ruined the best of this nation,” El-Lamie said.
“The SCAF and the government decided not to dissolve the councils by a Cabinet decree and saw that it is better to let the judiciary have the final word in dissolving municipal councils.” he added.
El-Lamie said that the court order does not conflict with Article 62 of the constitutional declaration which states that “all laws and regulations decided upon before the publication of this announcement remain valid and implemented; however, it is possible to cancel laws or amend them according to the rules and procedures adopted in this announcement.”
“I prefer that members of municipal councils be elected, not appointed, because appointment will involve personal interests. On the other hand, governors should not be elected because they are representatives of the president. If they are elected, this will make them restricted by voters’ decisions,” he added. –Additional reporting by agencies.
