Court right to cancel Mursi’s poll decree

An encouraging ruling by Egypt’s Administrative Court is a serious blow to President Mohammad Mursi. The court’s cancellation of his election decree will give strength to those who fear that he is subverting the Egyptian state by rewriting the constitution to suit his own party backed by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Administrative Court’s dismissal of the president’s decree calling for elections in April means that polls must now be delayed. The court did not launch a constitutional challenge to the presidency, but made its ruling on technical grounds since the Shura Council — the upper house of parliament — had not returned the amended electoral law to the Supreme Constitutional Court for final review before passing it.

A presidential legal adviser insisted that the presidency was not in conflict with the judiciary and agreed that the Shura Council should have resubmitted the law to the constitutional court, but both the court and the president are well aware that the courts have made a number of rulings that have gone against Mursi and his ruling Muslim Brotherhood, such as dissolving the Islamist-dominated lower house.

The underlying political issue is that the Islamist president has rammed through several laws, as well as a controversially narrow constitution, and that he looks likely to forget that he is the first democratically-elected president with responsibilities to build a new and inclusive Egypt, in favour of supporting the doctrines of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Last year, in another confrontation with the courts over their dismissal of the lower house, Mursi issued a decree giving himself temporary sweeping powers, trying to portray himself as a champion of democracy against old-style judges left over from the Hosni Mubarak days. The liberal opposition would have nothing to do with this idea and rejected Mursi’s decree as a pure grab for personal power. This time again, the opposition is delighted that the judiciary stopped the Muslim Brotherhood “from making a mess of the rule of law and legislation”.