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Human Rights Due Diligence and the Role of States

– December 3, 2012Posted in: Biz, Featured Stories, States in the Dock, War Economies - Geneva

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 3rd, 2012

A Global Coalition of Civil Society Organizations Launched a Report on Human Rights Due Diligence and the Role of States today in Geneva. The report was Commissioned from International Experts on the Role of States in Ensuring Business Entities Conduct Human Rights Due Diligence

The International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) along with the European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ) and the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability (CNCA) launched today a report commissioned by International Experts on Business and Human Rights, entitled “Human Rights Due Diligence: the Role of States.” The International Experts commissioned included Professor Olivier De Schutter, Professor Anita Ramasastry, Mark B. Taylor and Robert C. Thompson.

The Report builds off of a set of global Consultations with legal practitioners, academics and experts from around the world and examines how States are using their regulatory authority to mandate due diligence for human rights or areas akin to human rights, such as environmental protection and workplace health and safety. The Report seeks to establish the extent to which the legal systems of States already make use of due diligence to ensure that businesses respect established standards and to describe for policymakers a range of regulatory options they might use to take the next steps in ensuring businesses respect human rights.

Drawing on State practice and international standards, the Report finds the following:

• The origins of due diligence are neither a creation of the United Nations Human Rights Council nor a voluntary measure for corporate social responsibility. Due diligence has its origins from legal tools that States in every region are already using to ensure that business behavior meets social expectations, including standards set in law;

• The due diligence procedures found in a variety of legal systems are consistent with processes described in the United Nations Guiding Principles and other international instruments;

• The concept of due diligence is found in areas of law that are either analogous to or directly relevant for human rights, such as labor rights, environmental protection, consumer protection and anti-corruption;

• Due diligence requirements can be used to ensure that business enterprises can be held accountable for violations of law, including through overcoming obstacles to effective regulation posed by complex corporate structures or transnational activities;

• There are, at least, four main regulatory approaches through which States can ensure human rights due diligence activities by business. Usually these approaches co-exist within the same jurisdictions and legal systems. These include:

o Requiring due diligence as a matter of regulatory compliance;
o Providing incentives and benefits to companies in return for their being able to demonstrate due diligence practice;
o Encouraging due diligence through transparency and disclosure mechanisms;
o Combining one or more of the above approaches.

• States could make far greater use of legal tools to ensure business respects human rights in general and implements due diligence for human rights in particular.

“This Report is based on vast consultation with a global set of respondents, and provides strong evidence for the need for legal requirements on business entities to conduct human rights due diligence. We urge Governments to carefully consider the findings and work to ensure that the fulfillment of their duty to protect human rights includes placing requirements over business actors to conduct due diligence related to human rights,” said Amol Mehra, Coordinator of the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable.

“The fact that our coalitions have come together around this Report evidences the critical nature of the issue of human rights due diligence, and its potential value in ensuring that business respect human rights,” added Filip Gregor, Board Member of the European Coalition for Corporate Justice.

The launch of the Report will take place in conjunction with the Annual Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva, scheduled for December 4-5, 2012. ICAR, ECCJ AND CNCA will host a discussion with the Authors alongside a Keynote Address by Member of the European Parliament Richard Howitt from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm on December 3rd, 2012 in the Palais des Nations, Geneva, Switzerland.

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The International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) is coalition of leading human rights, environmental, development and labor groups. ICAR works to build frameworks of corporate accountability, strengthen current measures and defend existing laws, policies and legal precedents.

The European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ) promotes corporate accountability by bringing together national platforms of civil society organizations (CSOs) including NGOs, trade unions, consumer advocacy groups and academic institutions from all over Europe. ECCJ represents over 250 CSOs present in fifteen European countries such as FIDH and national chapters of Oxfam, Greenpeace, Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth.

The Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability (CNCA) unites environmental and human rights NGOs, faith groups, labor unions, and research and solidarity groups across Canada, including the Halifax Initiative. CNCA members seek the adoption of federal legislation that establishes mandatory corporate accountability standards for Canadian extractive companies that operate abroad. CNCA maintains that the provision of government support to Canadian corporations should be conditional on compliance with these standards. The network aims to enhance the effectiveness of its members’ activities through information sharing, policy analysis and research, and to coordinate joint advocacy for legal and policy reform. The CNCA also seeks to promote public awareness of these issues.

Contact: Amol Mehra, International Corporate Accountability Roundtable amol@accountabilityroundtable.org

Imgage: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout

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The Judiciary and Tunisia’s Transition

– May 3, 2012Posted in: Below Banner, Featured Stories, States in the Dock

Tunisian TV station owner Nabil Karoui was today convicted of disrupting public order and insulting “sacred values”, charges which arose over the broadcasting last autumn of the French-Iranian film Persepolis. The film offended some Muslims through its depiction of God in human form.

With Salafist sympathisers picketing on the pavement outside the courtroom, this trial has been taking place amid intense media coverage of freedom of speech issues, not least from Mr Karoui’s own Nessma TV station. But the trial has also been taking place amidst a wider struggle amongst jurists over the soul of Tunisia’s judiciary. In this video and blog post for LoR, Eileen Byrne reports from Tunis on the struggle for legitimacy at the heart of transitional justice in Tunisia.

Tunisia’s judicial system was one of the main instruments of repression under the regime of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Hundreds of political dissidents received long prison sentences in trials that lacked due process. In more recent years, as relatives of the president’s wife, Leila Trabelsi, infiltrated many sectors of economic activity — including real-estate through land appropriations, for example — the unhealthy influence of this very well-connected mafia extended to the nation’s courtrooms.

Tunisian judges are now speaking openly about the methods Ben Ali used to keep them in line, mainly through the now discredited Supreme Council of the Judiciary (Conseil Supreme de la Magistrature, CSM). Through his government-appointed CSM, Ben Ali used stick and carrot to keep judges in line, deciding which judges should be promoted and which demoted to rural backwaters. The secret services resorted to more subtle methods of pressure against individual judges, while the torture and harrassment that detainees and defendants were exposed to of course never had a hope of coming to court.

Since the revolution of January 2011 the Association of Tunisian Judges (Association des Magistrats Tunisiens – AMT), claiming to represent most of the nation’s judges, has pressed for faster action to remove judges who were particularly pliant to the wishes of the regime, or who were outright corrupt.

Under Ben Ali, as under his predecessor Habib Bourguiba, there were always some Tunisian lawyers who attempted to resist authoritarianism and assert citizens’ right to a fair trial. Some of these were found in the ranks of the AMT leadership during the Ben Ali years — until they were ousted and marginalised. The revolution last year has allowed them to proudly regain control of their association.

In Tunisia judicial appointments are traditionally announced during the summer break. When last August the CSM, continuing in existence despite the revolution, announced its annual raft of promotions, some judges argued indignantly that an opportunity had been missed to remove those in their ranks known to have collaborated closely with the previous regime. The AMT demanded that the CSM itself be formally dissolved.

The association wants an end to the ambiguity over just how judicial appointments have been made since the revolution. In protest at what it claimed was lack of progress in this respect, its members last week wore red arm-bands and picketed the building where the country’s constituent assembly, elected last October, was meeting.

The new justice minister, Noureddine Bhiri, moved quickly to announce that a bill will be presented to the assembly to create a provisional body to replace the discredited Supreme Council of the Judiciary (Conseil Supreme de la Magistrature, or CSM). This new body will oversee judicial appointments until the election of a parliament and a new government in spring or early summer 2012.

Mr Bhiri is a leading member of Nahda, the Islamist party that heads the ruling coalition, and is himself a former political prisoner. His new role presents many challenges. If the goal is a strong, independent judiciary, he must restrain himself when urged to give directives to the courts — as for example with businessmen who have recently been lobbying the government to have travel bans on more than 400 of their community lifted, so that (they argue) they can help get the economy moving again. The travel bans were court orders, and any lifting of them should therefore be left to the courts, not decided on by the minister, officials argue.

The AMT meanwhile remains suspicious of a new Tunisian Judge’s Union, created after the revolution, arguing that it is at best small and unrepresentative, and at worst an attempt to resist reform.

The union president Radhia Labidi firmly refutes such suggestions, and places her union in the reformist camp. The union expects judges found to have acted abusively to face sanctions as the nation’s process of transitional justice proceeds, she said. After a list circulated of judges alleged to have been close to the Ben Ali regime, the union said it opposed any such extra-judicial “clean-out”.

Both judges’ organisations want the provisional body that will supervise appointments for the next year to be one elected by judges themselves. The AMT has spelled out that it wants the body to “nominate judges, and decide on promotions and transfers” as well as to “examine requests for resignations or for the lifting of a judge’s immunity (from prosecution)”.

And both organisations are calling for the new constitution to stipulate clearly that the judiciary is separate from the executive power — for the first time since Tunisia became independent in 1956.

The creation of independent judicial system is a far from academic issue, as former regime members, including Ben Ali himself (in absentia)! come up for trial. Any process of transitional justice, most observers agree, is likely to generate additional court cases for those accused of egregious human rights abuses or corruption.

The revolution has meanwhile thrown up a new political landscape that will offer new kinds of challenges to judges learning how to operate without an authoritarian guide. As the Tunis-based media highlights what is seen as a threat to creative freedoms coming from extreme-conservative Salafist fringe of the Islamist movement, some high-profile cases are coming to court.

Eileen Byrne, Tunis
ebyrne202@yahoo.com

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Breivik’s Mistake Exposed in a Handshake

– April 22, 2012Posted in: Featured Stories, Rogues and Proxies, States in the Dock

At the end of the first week of the trial in Oslo of mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik (33) it was becoming apparent that Breivik’s plan to use the court as a pulpit for expounding his political views was not going to work very well.

Breivik spent much of the first week testifying and being cross-examined. The court had restricted his audience by not allowing the trial to be broadcast. Seventeen viewing centres were set up in courtrooms around the country to allow the families of victims to follow the trial and print media was allowed to report from the court room. Many followed the minute-to-minute transcribing of his testimony and cross-examination. But many did not.

Breivik’s testimony consisted of a harrowing and detailed description of his killing spree. Most of the Norwegian coverage reported the courtroom as shocked, silent, with some in tears at times. In the press, there were many references to the the dark place Brevik had created. The mood at the end of the first week was sombre.

The families of victims watching the trial reacted strongly during Breivik’s testimony, which was interrupted at times by the lawyers representing them. But the overriding sentiment seemed to be expressed by a desire not not let Breivik’s murderous acts dictate their reactions. Randi Johansen Perreau, who lost her 25-year-old son Rolf Christopher in the Utoya shootings, which her 14-year old son survived, pretty much summed it up in a comment to the WSJ reporter in Oslo;

“I think he got too much room to read (his prepared statement), and it’s not usual in Norwegian courts…If this was a military action from a militant organization, it’s strange to attack unarmed kids, most of them under 18 years of age…(but) He can’t have my anger. Then I’ll be in his world. He has taken enough from me by killing one of the dearest people in my life, and almost killed the other. He can’t have my anger, it should be used more constructively, to build the democratic society that we want.”

That admirable sentiment has been reflected in much of the international media coverage, which has remarked on the Norwegian court’s measured way of dealing with Breivik and its stark contrast with the adversarial thrashing he would have received by a British or American court. But the effect this controlled response has had is remarkable: over the course of the first week, most observers had already turned the corner from fascinated horror to a kind of cold and disturbed disgust. It is becoming apparent that Breivik is quickly transforming in the public’s mind from monstrous to pathetic.

He should have twigged to the fact that it was going to go wrong at the start of day one. As the trial began, the prosecutors and court appointed psychiatrists – seven or eight people in all – lined up to shake his hand. Breivik smiled as he took their hand one-by-one.

For many watching, that handshake was an appalling act of betrayal, not least of the victims. It was, in fact, quite the opposite: the prosecution’s handshake with the defendant is part of the Norwegian legal tradition. The fact it was maintained speaks volumes about the political significance behind this trial.

As the Washington Post reported, “Norwegian legal experts said it’s important that the country’s legal traditions apply to everyone, even Breivik, whose massacre shocked the wealthy, peaceful nation. The justice system here isn’t about “revenge, but sober, dignified treatment” for everyone accused of a crime, said Thomas Mathiesen, a professor of sociology of law at the University of Oslo.

“It is deeply ingrained in Norwegian tradition and fundamental values. If it lasts all the way through the 10 weeks of this trial, and I think it will, we have an important message to the world,” he said.

Mark Taylor, Oslo

Image: Oslo Court House, P3

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Closer to Justice? Côte d’Ivoire and the ICC One Year On

– April 11, 2012Posted in: Featured Stories, Leaders on Trial, States in the Dock, War Economies - The Hague

One year ago, after months of post-electoral crisis and several weeks of war, President Laurent Gbagbo was arrested by rebel forces, aided by UN and French troops. Mr. Gbagbo was delivered to The Hague by Côte d’Ivoire, becoming the first former head of state to be charged by the ICC. The ICC’s most politically senior target had been Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir, who is still in office and continues to travel freely through much of Africa.

On 3 October 2011, the Pre-Trial Chamber (III) of the ICC authorized the commencement of an investigation in Côte d’lvoire, regarding (i) crimes committed since 28 November 2010, and, (ii) any continuing crimes that may be committed in the future, provided that the contextual element of the continuing crimes is the same.

Following this authorization, in December 2011, the ICC charged Côte d’lvoire’s former president Mr. Laurent Gbagbo with four counts of crimes against humanity under Articles 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute. Gbagbo was charged as bearing “individual criminal responsibility, as indirect co-perpetrator” for crimes allegedly committed during violence that left some 3,000 people dead following November 2010 elections.

This was, in principle, good news for the fight against impunity. Elise Keppler, Human Rights Watch, said “the court was playing its part to show that even those at the highest levels of power cannot escape justice when implicated in grave crimes”.

However, several questions remain.

ICC’s contested jurisdiction

Côte d’Ivoire is, as of today, not a member of the ICC. It signed but it did not ratify the Rome Statute. On 1 October 2003, under Mr. Gbagbo’s administration, the country lodged an ad hoc declaration accepting the ICC’s jurisdiction (under Article 12.3 of the Rome Statute) with respect to alleged crimes committed from 19 September 2002. The ICC’s jurisdiction would cover all war crimes and crimes against humanity “for an unspecified period of time”. Full cooperation with the Court was also promised.

After November 2010 presidential elections, on 14 December 2010, the new president, Mr. Ouattara confirmed the declaration. By way of a letter addressed to the ICC, he accepted ICC’s jurisdiction regarding all crimes committed since March 2004. Further, in May 2011, Mr. Outtara addressed a new letter to the ICC requesting the investigation of the most serious crimes, but limited to those committed since 28 November 2010.

After seven years of silence following Mr. Gbagbo’s declaration, the ICC authorized an investigation in Côte d’Ivoire, but limited to crimes committed since 28 November 2010.

Firstly, it should be noted that ad hoc declarations refer concrete situations to the ICC. They do not imply general or permanent recognition of jurisdiction, only to the situation deferred or those facts connected or being part of that situation’s context. The ICC’s justification of such connection between the 2010 facts (i.e. post-election violence) and those of 2002 was certainly poor.

Second, as Judge Silvia Fernandez de Gurmendi expressed in her dissenting opinion, reasonable doubts could be raised regarding the temporal scope of the investigation, i.e. limiting to facts which occurred after 28 November 2010. This decision was taken on the basis that (i) the vast majority of the supporting materials provided by the Prosecutor focused on the most recent post-electoral crisis; and (ii) post electoral violence had “reached unprecedented levels”.

The ICC’s decision was made despite the existence of information available on crimes allegedly committed since 2002 (and the Prosecutors’ support to investigating crimes since 2002). In addition, jurisdiction shall be limited to “continuing crimes”. This term implies the risk that war crimes and crimes against humanity that might not be considered as “continuing crimes” might not be investigated. A broader approach would have better served the preventative impact of the ICC’s intervention in a situation that the Court qualifies as volatile.

But on 22 February 2012, the Pre-Trial Chamber (III ) of the ICC decided to expand the temporary scope of its investigation, so as to include crimes allegedly committed between 19 September 2002 (when an attempted coup d’Etat against President Gbagbo took place, launching a pro-Ouattara rebellion) and 28 November 2010 (post elections violence). The Prosecutor has now provided further information regarding potentially relevant crimes committed between 2002 and 2010 by both pro-government and pro-rebel forces.

So now the ICC understands that the violence in the period between 2002 and 2010, although reaching varying levels of intensity at different locations and at different times, is to be treated as a single situation and therefore should be treated as an ongoing crime scene.

Reactions

The ICC has been accused of fragmentary approach. The accusation was fuelled by the fact that the ICC had followed Mr. Ouattara’s approach of investigating only the most serious crimes “committed since 28 November 2010”. But also, by the silence of the ICC regarding crimes allegedly committed by the pro-Ouattara Forces républicaines (FRCI). The United Nations Operation in Cote d’Ivoire (UNOCI) and human rights organizations such as the International Federation Human Rights, and Amnesty International pointed out that the FRCI participated in the massacres of Duekoué in March 2011 and have widely documented extensive abuses committed by both pro-Gbagbo forces and pro-Ouattara forces.

It would seem that both presidents saw in the ICC a potential tool against their political opponent. Mr. Gbagbo’s mistake is perhaps failing to realize that the ICC was barely functional in 2003, having only been established in mid-2002: But time has now passed. The Gbagbo case is scheduled to start in June and it may be the first case argued by the new Chief Prosecutor, Ms Bensouda, replacing Moreno-Ocampo.

Reactions in Côte d’Ivoire to court’s decision to expand the temporal scope of investigations have been positive. The president of the Ivorian Human Rights and Politics Foundation (FIDHOP) described the court’s decision as courageous and as a sign of fair justice. The chief of the Front populaire ivoirien (FPI, the political party of Laurent Gbagbo) welcomed the expansion of the jurisdiction, saying it was in line with Ivoirians expectations. “We expect impartial justice”, he said. In fact, the court’s move has been seen as a victory for Mr. Gbagbo, as Ouattara’s partisans wanted an investigation limited to 2010 post elections violence. But the chief of the political coalition Forces Nouvelles of Côte d’Ivoire (FNCI, which integrates the ex rebel group Forces Nouvelles once leaded by Mr. Soro, the former Prime Minister who was appointed president of the national assembly on 12 March – the second most powerful position in the country after the President) also claims that justice is being served. However, he argued, the fact that some Gbagbo has been accused doesn’t mean that members of the FNCI need now to be prosecuted.

Human rights groups allege that both sides have were involved in crimes committed in the post-election violence of 2010. NGOs have been calling for Mr. Ouattara’s potential responsibility in violence, accusing the ICC of pursuing “victor’s justice” by prosecuting Gbagbo alone. Allegations have been made over the possible involvement by Ouattara officials in the violence, including Prime Minister Soro. Chief Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo is on record saying that both sides committed crimes during the 2010 violence and that both sides are being investigated. Will Mr. Ouattara, who has assured full cooperation wit the Court, keep that promise in the event the ICC opens a case against his partisans (such as Mr. Soro, who commanded rebel forces suspected of committing crimes)?

The ICC’s jurisdiction in the African country raises in addition the question of complementarity. According to Mr. Ouattara’s declaration addressed to the ICC, the country does not have sufficient capacity and the necessary structures to pursue such proceedings.

Are Ivorian judges and institutions not capable of prosecuting those most responsible within their own jurisdiction? In fact, proceedings are being held at a national level, including against close allies of Mr. Gbagbo. In February 2012, international arrest warrants were issued against 13 senior officials of the former regime of Mr. Gbagbo living in exile, who are accused of having participated in violence between December 2010 and April 2011. Benin and Cameroun have promised cooperation with Ivorian authorities, and Ouattara repeatedly promised to bring to justice anyone implicated in crimes committed during the post-election period, but in reality little progress appears to have been achieved. In particular, there is a lack of domestic accountability efforts to prosecute forces allied with President Ouattara.

Peace and justice in Côte d’Ivoire

The challenge of fairness must also be weighed against the possibility of further violence. The ICC proceedings, especially any which target the sitting president and members of his government, risk throwing the country into chaos again. Cote d’Ivoire remains a politically fragile country.

For the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire did not start with the 2010 elections. It is rooted in history. The 2010 election was supposed to help bringing stability to the country, but instead it led to the renewal of violence leaving some 3,000 people dead.

Mr. Ouattara’s swearing as President on May 21 of last year officially ended the political crisis. But instability remained. In February of this year, the head of the UN operation in Côte d’Ivoire (ONUCI) openlly sought the cooperation of the FPI (Mr. Gbagbo’s party), in order to build peace in the country. This was the first of several meetings that are to be held in order to launch dialogue with all politic actors within a reconciliation process.

However, the way forward is not an easy one. On 26 February, following partial legislative elections in 12 constituencies, new violence caused five deaths. On 21 March, the UN Human Rights Council discussed the report of the UN Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Côte d’Ivoire, Doudou Diene. Diene noted that most of human rights violations resulted “less from the state’s complicity than from its failure to prevent them, because of the difficulty of reforming the security sector.” Diene implicated rogue government forces in 27 cases of torture and inhumane and degrading treatment and 22 cases of arbitrary arrests.

Further, the Security Council is soon expected to consider the final report of the panel of experts regarding the suitability of the sanctions regime currently in place towards Côte d’Ivoire (which includes arms embargo, individual sanctions as travel bans, freezing of assets against three Ivorian individuals and embargo on the export of diamond), in view of the current political situation and steps taken by the government to consolidate state authority, establish the rule of law throughout the country and the implementation of the transitional justice mechanisms that are being set in motion, including the ICC indictment of Mr. Gbagbo, further ICC investigations, the prosecution for economic crimes and the Dialogue, Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

In short, the ICC prosecution is taking place in a complex and volatile environment with a variety of local and international actors. Impunity for crimes committed in Côte d’Ivoire must be addressed. Seeking the truth and rendering a fair justice is the only way to achieve reconciliation. Ivoirians have expressly entrusted this task to the ICC: rendering justice shall require that the ICC Prosecutor investigate and hold accountable those most responsible from all parties.

Pia Navazo

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Egypt – The Struggle for the Constitution

– March 13, 2012Posted in: Featured Stories, States in the Dock

The battle over who will dominate the Constitutional Commission is underway in Egypt. With a Presidential election being held at the same time, there is an atmosphere of chaos. Amal Wahab is the Cairo correspondent for the Norwegian daily Klassekampen, which published this piece on the weekend.

On Saturday, the parliament began efforts to choose a constitutional commission of 100 people, who will write a new constitution for the post-revolutionary Egypt.

“The referendum and the subsequent constitutional declaration from last year, has planted the seeds of a deep division among the people. A struggle of wills is underway”, Hassan Nafaha, Professor of political science told Klassekampen. Nafaha claims that the country is in an important phase in the workings between the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces

After Mubarak was deposed in February last year, the Islamists agreed to a vote on constitutional amendments in 1971 constitution, while the secular forces of the right and left wanted a new constitution. The Islamists won the argument, in what many claim was a secret agreement between the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Nine sections of the Constitution were amended and put up for a vote. Over seventy percent of Egyptians voted for those constitutional changes. That should have meant that the amended 1971 Constitution would be the country’s constitution during the transition period. According to this constitution, the SCAF would have to transfer power to the leader of the country’s Administrative Court.

Instead, the SCAF issued what they called the Constitutional Declaration which, in addition to the nine modified sections Egyptians had voted on, included fifty-four paragraphs Egyptians had not voted on. The Declaration established that there would be parliamentary elections in November 2011 and that this parliament would be asked to choose a constitutional commission of one hundred people to write the new constitution. The Declaration places no restrictions on the parliament as to how the Commission should be selected to ensure that it is representative.

“Since there is a lack of guidelines for the Commission to be selected, these will have to be negotiated among the factions in parliament. This will no doubt take time, and it is unlikely to be in place before a new president is elected”, says Nafaha.

In the absence of guidelines on selection of the Commission, there is a genuine fear that Islamists in the country will seek to dominate the design of the new constitution. The Liberty and Justice party, which is the political wing of Muslim Brotherhood, together with the newly established Noor Party of the Salafi movement, presently occupy seventy percent of the parliament’s seats. The Brotherhood was established back in 1928 and has since been an active player in the opposition. They reaped the fruits of decades of social and political work in the elections of last November, and were elected as the single largest party.

The Egyptian newspaper al-Masry al-Youm has reported that the Brotherhood wants forty percent of the Constitutional Commission to be elected members of parliament. The Liberal party has proposed a maximum of twenty-five percent, while the leftist Tagammu party argues that the members of the Commission should be selected from outside the Parliament (the idea is that a constitution should include all and not be written by and for the majority in parliament). No one doubts that an Islamist domination of this process can change the country radically in the years to come.

The requirement for the election of the president at the same time makes the process even more difficult. On this, too, Egyptians are divided.

In the wake of abuses since Mubarak’s fall, including the loss of hundreds of lives, angry protesters have demanded that the SCAF transfer power to a civilian authority as soon as possible. For their part, it has been suggested that the SCAF fear they will be subjected to prosecution and financial scrutiny once they leave power and that they want to consolidate what remains of the Mubrarak regime and reduce the damage from the January revolution.

Under pressure from the street, the SCAF decided to launch presidential elections. Candidates had until 10 March to register, presidential elections will be completed by 21 June and the new president will assume office no later that 1 July. Candidates from parliament have certain advantages in attempting to run for president, as MPs can be nominated by their own party. If you are not an MP you must obtain written support from thirty MPs or 30,000 official endorsements from people in several different counties.

The present crop of presidential candidates are, according to Nahafa, either “Islamists with no party affiliation, former key persons in the Mubarak regime or completely unknown independent people.”

Nafaha believes it is problematic that the election of the new president will take place simultaneously to the new Constitution being created. “First, according to the Declaration, the parliament, has all of six months to agree on how the Commission should look, and another six months to write the new Constitution and put it up for a vote in a referendum.” If the the Constitution should be ready before the presidential election, it means “that the country’s fundamental documents will be nailed together in all haste. We may end up with a bad constitution, and an even more miserable president”, he told Klassekampen.

“Egypt is at a crossroads. Either Egyptians will succeed in putting in place a constitution and a president worthy of the new post-revolutionary Egypt. Or the counter-revolution will succeed in reproducing the old regime, in a slightly sleeker form, and continue as before.”

Amal Wahab

Image: anti SCAF grafitti Hossam al-Hamalawy

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