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CAIRO: Egypt's powerful Muslim Brotherhood threatened on Wednesday to bring its supporters out onto the streets over the military government's plans to set out the basics of a new constitution ahead of an elected People's Assembly.
The Brotherhood and other smaller parties, most of them also Islamist, said that one million people would protest nationwide on November 18 if the plans to pre-empt the promised People's Assembly to be elected early next year were not abandoned.
The Islamists were reacting to comments by Deputy Prime Minister Ali al-Salmi in Wednesday's edition of the state-owned daily Al-Ahram in which he said the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces was “carefully considering”a plan for a “declaration of basic principles.” The Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, called for Salmi's resignation.
“We call on Ali al-Salmi to step down and, if the government presses ahead with its plan, for all of its members to quit, because (this proposal) is a threat to Egypt's security,” the party's vice chairman Saad al-Ketatni said.
“The national forces will not allow a small minority to impose its will on everyone,” he said, reading a statement in the name of the party and its electoral allies.
He said that the government should “remember what happened to the system of the corrupt, all-powerful tyrant,” a reference to the mass revolt which overthrew veteran president Hosni Mubarak's regime in February.
According to Al-Ahram, the declaration of principles being considered by the military government would state that “Egypt is a civil, democratic state which unites all of its citizens without distinction under the rule of law.”The clause is intended as a safeguard for Egypt's Coptic Christian minority which makes up between six and eight percent of the 80 million population.
The basic principles would also state that “sharia (Islamic law) is the main source of legislation,” but not the sole one.
