Parliament's referral of Constitutional Court ruling to Court of Cassation "shows respect for the judiciary"

Dr. Essam El-Erian, the acting head of Egypt’s Freedom and Justice Party, and Chairman of the Parliamentary Foreign Relations Committee in Cairo, has described parliament’s decision to refer the Constitutional Court ruling on the elected chamber’s validity to the Court of Cassation as “showing respect for the judiciary”.

Dr. Saad Katatni, the president of the parliament, had announced earlier that, based on the principle of the rule of law and respect for the independence of the authorities and in response to the decision of Egypt’s president, officials would be looking at mechanisms for applying the decision of the court on parliament.

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In the Egyptian parliament’s first session after President Morsi overturned the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces (SCAF) decision to dissolve it, only a brief word was made by Dr. Katatni, who stressed parliament’s respect for the judiciary. He pointed out that the parliament had been recalled to enable MPs to look at the constitutional court ruling to dissolve the chamber. This would happen in another meeting, “which has not been scheduled yet”.

During the plenary session, however, Katatni referred the issue of the validity of MPs’ election to the court of cassation. He added that the court’s review would be based on article 40 of the constitutional declaration issued on 30 March, 2012.