Egyptian court is considering whether to disqualify Shafiq from presidential race.

Egyptian court is considering whether to disqualify Shafiq from presidential race.(AA).An Egyptian court is considering whether to disqualify one of Egypt’s presidential candidates, just two days before the country is due to vote in the final stage of the historic election. Egyptians are due to head to the second round of polls beginning on Saturday but they remain on tenterhooks as the Supreme Constitutional Court is expected to decide on the validity of the law passed by the Islamist-led parliament that sought to bar Ahmed Shafiq, Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister, from the vote pitting him against the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Mursi. The court will also review the legality of rules that governed a parliamentary election earlier this year in which Islamists swept up seats. A judicial body has already recommended that both laws be overturned, allowing Shafiq to continue his bid and possibly dissolving the parliament.
The court is not bound to follow that advice, but it is a likely indication of the ruling. Analysts say that the election drama only two days before the Saturday and Sunday run-off is emblematic of the tortuous and messy transition overseen by the council of army generals since Mubarak was ousted 16 months ago. “This sort of overhang is a reflection of our current state of affairs. Only days before the election and there is legal uncertainty,” Judge Mohamed Hamad al-Gamal, a former head of the state council, told Reuters. Seeking to derail presidential bids by senior Mubarak-era officials, parliament approved the law on April 12 to strip political rights from anyone who served in top government or ruling party posts in the last decade of Mubarak’s rule. That law initially prompted the election committee to disqualify Shafiq. But he was let back into the race on appeal and pending the constitutional court ruling. In a security message its website, the U.S. embassy in Cairo said any decisions from the Thursday’s court session may lead to protests. “These court decisions may further raise the level of tension as Egypt heads to the polls to elect their first democratically elected president,” it said. The election pits Shafiq, who is running on a tough law-and-order platform, against the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mursi, whose movement has vowed to uphold the goals of the uprising that propelled it to the forefront of Egyptian politics. Mursi came ahead with 24.7 percent, against Shafiq’s 23.6 percent, in the first round of voting in May, which saw 13 candidates compete for the top job. The race has polarized the nation between those who fear a return to the old regime under Shafiq’s leadership and those wanting to keep religion out of politics and who accuse the Muslim Brotherhood -- which already dominates parliament -- of monopolizing power since last year’s revolt.
“It’s the worst possible scenario,” said Hassan Nafea, professor of political science at Cairo University. “If Shafiq is elected, this means the revolution has been aborted. If it’s Mursi, the country will be run according to the Muslim Brotherhood program, which most Egyptians reject,” he told AFP news agency. The difficult choice has garnered support for the boycott movement, largely ignored in the first round of voting. Now high-profile activists and celebrities are calling on the 50 million registered voters to abstain or to void their ballots, highlighting the fact that the very same judiciary that issued the controversial Mubarak verdicts will oversee the election. Legal experts say they expect Shafiq will be allowed to run. The court could avoid a verdict saying the election committee was not the competent authority to refer the case, but the experts thought that unlikely. On parliament, an administrative court said in February that the election rules were unconstitutional. In that vote, two-thirds of seats were allocated to parties and the rest to individuals who were supposed to be independent of any party. The administrative court judge said political parties should not have been allowed to run for the individual seats, although they did. He also said half rather than a third of the seats should have been apportioned to individuals. “If it is proven that the election rules were flawed or unconstitutional, then the entire election process is void,” Judge Gamal said. “It would mean that this parliament is unconstitutional, illegitimate and must be dissolved.” Some judicial sources say the constitutional court could delay a ruling on parliament until after the presidential vote.Read the full story here.