BREAKING - Egypt's Military Seizes Control Of Country, Invalidates Parliamentary Elections

HIGH COURT RULES 1/3 OF PARLIAMENT WERE ELECTED UNCONSTITUTIONALLY


THIS POST WILL BE UPDATED AS MORE INFORMATION COMES IN


This is probably good news. From the information I have, most positions of power in the Egyptian military are filled with Mubarak supporters and Christians.


As is often the case in the Muslim world, the hardcore Muslims leave all the real work those who are not part of the Ummah. The true followers of the prophet are above real work.


The military often acts as a bulwark against absolute chaos. Think Pakistan, as an example.


ANOTHER THOUGHT - This is yet another repudiation of Obama's policy. The "Arab Spring" was untenable from the get go. It was not a Democracy movement, but a Fascist movement which pretended to use Democracy to get elected only to institute it's dictatorial, violent, and insane policies. 


Obama has been on quite a losing streak the past few weeks, and now, perhaps, the biggest "jewel" in his foreign policy crown is beginning to crumble.


In a way, the Arab Spring has been the Obama equivalent of Reagan's "tear down this wall", or Nixon's opening up of China.

This is a major repudiation of Obama's vision.

Yet another Obama initiative is falling apart.


From the Washington Post:

CAIRO — Egypt’s Islamist-dominated parliament is likely to be suspended after a high court ruling Thursday that one-third of its lawmakers were elected unconstitutionally, officials said.


Local newspapers and Arabic television channels reported that Egypt’s military rulers were going to take over legislative power in the country and planned to announce the dissolution of the lower house of parliament later Thursday.

The court also ruled that Mubarak ally Ahmed Shafiq is allowed to run for president in elections that begin on Saturday, invalidating a law that bars members of the ousted dictator’s party from participating in political life.


Incensed revolutionaries called the two decisions the death of Egypt’s revolution, and declared the dissolution of parliament and Shafiq’s participation in the landmark presidential vote the final steps in a military coup.


Protesters clashed with security forces outside the courthouse minutes after the decisions were announced.
“This ruling means that the next president will work without institutions, he will face huge criticism and rage,” said Sobhi Saleh, a leading lawmaker from the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice  party.


Among Egypt’s old guard, Saleh claimed, “there was outrage over the Islamic majority of the parliament. And there was a plan to destroy it.”


The court said that political parties unlawfully fielded candidates for the one-third of seats in the lower house of parliament that were supposed to be set aside for independent candidates.


As a result, lawmakers elected to those seats likely will lose their posts. Maher Sami, a spokesman for the constitutional court, told reporters that the ruling effectively calls for the dissolution of the entire lower house of parliament.


“Both decisions empower the Mubarak status-quo, which is no surprise, as the judges of the court were appointed by the latter, and represent a part of the so-called ‘deep-state,’ ” Omar Ashour, an Egypt expert at Exeter University, said in an e-mail.


Shafiq will compete for the presidency against Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood candidate. Morsi and his allies say Shafiq wants to return Egypt’s government to the repressive tactics Mubarak favored. Shafiq, in turn, says a Morsi victory would transform Egypt into an ultra-conservative Islamic state.


The judges on the top court are Mubarak appointees and seen as sympathetic to the old order. That perception could fuel confrontations between protesters and security forces, who were recently given vast powers to detain civilians.


The lower house, known as the “people’s assembly,” is the most powerful part of the parliament. The Muslim Brotherhood, which controls just under half the seats in the lower house, stands to lose the most from the decision.


The question of Shafiq’s eligibility to run for office centered on whether Shafiq ought to be subject to a recently passed law that bars senior members Mubarak’s disbanded National Democratic Party from political life for 10 years.


The court ruled the law was unconstitutional.


Amr Darrag, another leading member of the Freedom and Justice Party, said his party would respect the judicial decision regarding Shafiq’s fitness to run for office and would continue to strive to beat him at the ballot box.


“Our position was to do our best to legally isolate Ahmed Shafiq from the post of president,” Darrag said. “If we can’t do that then the people will isolate him with the vote.”

From the New York Times:

Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court on Thursday ruled that the Islamist-led Parliament must be immediately dissolved, while also blessing the right of Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister to run for president, escalating a battle for power between the remnants of the toppled order and rising Islamists.

The high court, packed with sympathizers of the ousted president, appears to be engaged in a frontal legal assault on the Muslim Brotherhood, the once outlawed organization whose members swept to power in Parliament this spring and whose candidate was the front-runner for the presidency as well. The presidential election runoff is scheduled to go ahead Saturday and Sunday.

The ruling — which critics said amounted to a back-door coup — means that whoever emerges as the winner of the runoff scheduled for this weekend will take power without the check of a sitting Parliament and could even exercise some influence over the election of a future Parliament. It vastly compounds the stakes in the presidential race, raises questions about the ruling military council’s commitment to democracy, and makes uncertain the future of a constitutional assembly recently formed by the Parliament as well.