Egyptian Islamists on Wednesday accused the country’s Constitutional Court of laboring on behalf of the country’s military junta by overruling President Mohamed Morsi’s decision to reinstate parliament.
Morsi said on Monday he was recalling parliament and would hold an election once a constitution was in place but the Constitutional Court froze his decree.
“The Constitutional Court’s ruling that has overturned the head of state’s decision to reinstate parliament shows that Egypt’s Constitutional Court is an instrument of the Supreme Military Council, fulfilling political orders from the military,” said Tareq al-Zumr, a member of the Building and Development Party, a political wing of the al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya radical Islamist group.
“At present the Constitutional Court is a special government committee, not an independent judicial body,” he said.
The lower house of the Egyptian parliament reconvened on Tuesday despite the court’s ruling to dissolve it. The lawmakers met after President Mohamed Morsi overturned the court judgment.
Lower house speaker Saad al Katatni said that the lawmakers were not in conflict with the high court’s ruling but only sought a mechanism for its implementation.
MP Naser al-Hafi, a Muslim Brotherhood lawyer, challenged the court’s ruling as illegitimate.
