{"id":27645,"date":"2019-01-01T11:22:54","date_gmt":"2019-01-01T11:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=27645"},"modified":"2019-01-01T11:22:54","modified_gmt":"2019-01-01T11:22:54","slug":"israel-jails-mentally-ill-palestinian-for-britons-killing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=27645","title":{"rendered":"Israel jails mentally ill Palestinian for Briton\u2019s killing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nCAIRO: Supporters of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi are calling for constitutional changes that would allow him to stay in power once his second term ends in 2022.
Backers of the former military chief, re-elected in March with over 97 percent of the vote, want parliament to discuss repealing an article limiting presidents to two consecutive four-year terms.
In an editorial published on Sunday, the pro-government state-run daily newspaper Al-Akhbar voiced hope that 2019 would see \u201cthe start of a belated political reform\u201d to secure El-Sisi\u2019s future in power.
The column by the newspaper\u2019s director Yasser Rizk said this would \u201cpreserve all the people\u2019s gains in terms of security, stability and economic recovery\u201d since El-Sisi came to power five years ago,
He said the change could be approved by late summer 2019.
El-Sisi, who led the army\u2019s overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 following mass protests against his rule, won his first term as president the following year.
His government has been widely criticized by rights groups over the repression of dissidents.
As well as a crackdown on dissent, El-Sisi has overseen a military campaign against Daesh group-linked extremists in the Sinai Peninsula.
Egypt is slowly recovering from a deep economic crisis that has seen the value of its currency plummet and state subsidies slashed.
In November 2017, even before he was re-elected, El-Sisi told American news network CNBC he would not seek a third term in office.
But after his victory in the March 2018 polls, the question has gradually returned to public debate.
Mohammad Fuad, and MP with the Wafd party close to the government, told AFP that \u201cthe whole of Egypt was talking about (Rizk\u2019s) article last night.\u201d
\u201cThis issue has been under discussion everywhere in Egypt, not just in parliament, for some time,\u201d he said, adding that a potential parliamentary debate on the issue had not been initiated by the government.
In the current context of Egyptian politics, there was little surprise that the debate was taking place, Fuad said.
\u201cPeople have been expecting a constitutional amendment on extending presidential terms, because every time the debate turns to the end of (El-Sisi\u2019s) second term, the question is: who is the alternative? That causes panic,\u201d he said.
Mustafa Kamal Al-Sayed, a political science professor at Cairo University, said Rizk \u201cdid not express a personal point of view, but revealed trends within government institutions.\u201d
He said El-Sisi \u201cdoes not want to step down from power while he is alive … he fears that he could be held to account if he leaves his post.\u201d
H.A. Hellyer, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Royal United Services Institute in London, said that \u201cevery indication from the last few years indicates that amending the constitution is of foremost importance.\u201d
\u201cOtherwise we would not have seen all these trial balloons in the media, and we would have seen indications of successors that are being groomed,\u201d he said.
On social media, opposition figures deplored talk of allowing El-Sisi to stand for a third term.
\u201cThere are constitutions and laws in authoritarian regimes and constitutions and laws in democratic regimes,\u201d wrote Mohamed ElBaradei, a respected former UN nuclear watchdog chief and Egyptian politician on Twitter.
\u201cThe former are a tool for entrenching authoritarian rule based on repression and fear, while the second are a tool for establishing good governance based on freedom and justice.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CAIRO: Supporters of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi are calling for constitutional changes that would allow him to stay in power once his second term ends in 2022.Backers of the former military chief, re-elected in March with over 97 percent of the vote, want parliament to discuss repealing an article limiting presidents to two consecutive…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":27646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}