{"id":32012,"date":"2019-02-06T03:22:57","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T03:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=32012"},"modified":"2019-02-06T03:22:57","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T03:22:57","slug":"egypts-parliament-debates-proposal-to-extend-presidential-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=32012","title":{"rendered":"Egypt’s parliament debates proposal to extend presidential term"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Egyptian parliament is debating a\u00a0proposal<\/a> to amend the country’s constitution that will extend the presidential term from four years to six.<\/p>\n

This means President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi<\/a> may be able to stay in power beyond 2022, when his second term in office ends.<\/p>\n

Parliament’s speaker Ali Abdel-Aal on Tuesday said two-thirds of the 596-seat legislature endorsed the proposed amendment.<\/p>\n

The motion was submitted on Sunday after approval by a required fifth of the chamber’s 596 MPs, the vast majority of whom are Sisi supporters.<\/p>\n

Abdel-Aal said on the same day that the amendments “are rooted in the interest of both the state and the Egyptian people”.<\/p>\n

The motion would give the president the power to appoint top judges and bypass judicial oversight in vetting draft legislation before it is voted into law.<\/p>\n

Timothy Kaldas, a non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, told Al Jazeera that opposition groups in Egypt<\/a> have been dealing with the government with the expectation that this amendment was coming.<\/p>\n

“It’s one that we’ve expected for quite some time, but it is one formal step that could leave President Sisi in power until 2034,” Kaldas said. “It was really more of a question of when than if.”<\/p>\n

Repression of opposition\u00a0<\/h2>\n

Sisi has presided over an unprecedented crackdown on dissent, and was re-elected last year after all potentially serious challengers were jailed or pressured to exit the race.<\/p>\n

He has repeatedly said he would not stay in office any longer than Egyptians wanted him to and that he was not in favour of amending the Constitution’s term limits.<\/p>\n

“This is more about the longevity of Sisi’s rule than specifically targeting the opposition,” Kaldas said.<\/p>\n

“The reality is that unfortunately there are a number of measures in place to repress the opposition in Egypt,” he added.<\/p>\n

“A number of leading opposition figures have either been imprisoned or forced into exile or had their assets frozen or have been banned from travel.”<\/p>\n

Kaldas added that there already exists “extraordinary pressure” on people publicly critical of the government.<\/p>\n

Dalia Fahmy, associate professor of political science at Long Island University, told Al Jazeera that the proposal will go through a vote in the coming months and would need a two-thirds approval, which has already been secured, according to many parliamentarians.<\/p>\n

“This is not a surprise at all,” she said, speaking from New Jersey. “This is a president that came to power in a coup, following one of the bloodiest massacres in Egypt’s history,” she said, referring to the killing of hundreds of activists and supporters of then elected President Mohamed Morsi<\/a> at Rabaa Square<\/a> in 2013.<\/p>\n

“He has systematically consolidated power around himself, virtually decapitating the judiciary. What we’re seeing now is that the Parliament has become a rubber stamp on his authority.”<\/p>\n

A constitutional amendment to extend Sisi’s rule would add to concerns that the country is slipping back into authoritarianism eight years after a pro-democracy uprising ended former President Hosni Mubarak<\/a>‘s nearly three-decade rule.<\/p>\n

“What we’re seeing today is not only has Egypt regressed to pre-revolutionary moments, but it has actually consolidated through this constitutional amendment. If it indeed goes through a referendum and is voted upon in the summer, then we are way worse than we were under Mubarak,” Fahmy said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Egyptian parliament is debating a\u00a0proposal to amend the country’s constitution that will extend the presidential term from four years to six. This means President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi may be able to stay in power beyond 2022, when his second term in office ends. Parliament’s speaker Ali Abdel-Aal on Tuesday said two-thirds of the 596-seat…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":32013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32012","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\/32012","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=32012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}