Wissam Nassar
Egyptian police officers stood guard outside Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court on Sunday, while supporters of President Mohamed Morsi protested near the entrance of the building.
CAIRO — Egypt’s highest court on Sunday postponed its much-awaited ruling on the legitimacy of the legislative assembly that drafted a new charter last week, accusing a crowd of Islamists of blocking judges from entering their building on what it called “a dark black day in the history of the Egyptian judiciary.”
Although hundreds of security officers were on hand to ensure that judges of the Supreme Constitutional Court could get into the court, and civilians came and went without any problems, the accusations intensified a standoff between the judges appointed under former President Hosni Mubarak and Egypt’s new Islamist leaders that has thrown the political transition into a new crisis 22 months after Mr. Mubarak’s ouster.
Upon approaching the court on Sunday morning, the judges said in a statement that they saw crowds “closing the entrances of the roads to the gates, climbing the fences, chanting slogans denouncing its judges and inciting the people against them.”
The judges were prevented from entering “because of the threat of harm and danger to their safety,” the statement said, calling it “an abhorrent scene of shame and disgrace.”
As a result, the judges announced that they were “suspending the court’s sessions” until they could resume their work without “psychological and physical pressures.”
Anticipation of the court’s decision on the new constitution had set off the latest political crisis. Fear that the court would dissolve the assembly and undo months of work led President Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party, to announce 10 days ago that his edicts were not be subject to judicial review until the completion of the constitution.
Despite Mr. Morsi’s attempt, the same anticipation of dissolution drove the Islamist-dominated assembly to rush out a hurried constitution before the court could act and against the objections of Egypt’s secular parties and the Coptic Christian Church. Judges appointed by Mr. Mubarak have previously dissolved the elected Parliament and the first constitutional assembly.
The sudden effort by the president and his Islamist allies to push through a constitution over any objections from their secular factions or the courts has unified the opposition, prompted hundreds of thousands of protesters to take to the streets and set off a wave of attacks on a dozen offices of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. A judicial trade association has urged judges across the country to go on strike, and some of the highest courts have joined it.
Over the weekend, Mr. Morsi continued to push his plans for the new constitution, setting a national referendum on it for Dec. 15.
“I pray to God and hope that it will be a new day of democracy in Egypt,” he said in a nationally televised speech, calling for a “national dialogue.”
But his recent tone and actions reminded critics of the autocratic ways of his predecessor, and have aroused a new debate here about his commitment to democracy and pluralism at a time when he and his Islamist allies dominate political life.
Mr. Morsi’s advisers call the tactics a regrettable but necessary response to genuine threats to the political transition from what they call the deep state — the vestiges of the autocracy of former President Mubarak, especially in the news media and the judiciary.
But his critics say they hear a familiar paranoia in Mr. Morsi’s new tone that reminds them of talk of the “hidden hands” and foreign plots that Mr. Mubarak once used to justify his authoritarianism.
“I have sent warnings to many people who know who they are, who may be committing crimes against the homeland,” Mr. Morsi declared in an interview with state television on Thursday night, referring repeatedly to secret information about a “conspiracy” and “real and imminent threats” that he would not disclose. “If anybody tries to derail the transition, I will not allow them.”
Egyptian Court Postpones Ruling on Charter
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Egyptian Court Postpones Ruling on Charter
