The Constituent Assembly crisis is an opportunity to reach a consensus on its composition and to avoid previous mistakes, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed al-Beltagy said Monday.
On his Facebook page, Beltagy, who is also a Brotherhood MP, said the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces was wrong to hold a meeting with party leaders Sunday because organizing the drafting of the constitution is Parliament's job.
Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi had met with the chiefs of 17 political parties and several MPs. After the meeting, the heads of the Freedom and Justice, Nour and Wafd parties issued a statement in which they said they had agreed to hold another joint session for Parliament’s two houses to set up another constitution-writing assembly.
Beltagy said talk about an obligation to finish writing the constitution before conducting the presidential election raises concerns and disrupts the scene.
Sources from the parties that attended the meeting said Tantawi called for finishing the constitution-writing process before the election is held next month.
Beltagy said another mistake was for participants to approve the idea of forming the constitution-writing committee entirely from outside Parliament. While the dissolved committee suffered from over-representation of MPs, the new one will have no MPs represented at all, he said.
Beltagy called for representing Parliament’s two houses fairly and endorsing a certain constitution-writing assembly makeup based on a consensus vote. He also urged the use of appropriate criteria for forming the committee.
He said time should be allowed for political groups to reach a consensus on the proposed figures ahead of the vote.
