Until the late hours of 24 March, the names of the 100-member constituent assembly to draft Egypt’s first post-25 January Revolution were not yet officially announced. As many as 2,078 people are nominated for joining the assembly and it has proved cumbersome for members of the two houses of parliament - the People’s Assembly and Shura Council - to choose among them.
Mostafa Bakri, independent MP and head of the committee in charge of supervising the vote-counting process, indicated that as many as 589 parliamentarians participated in electing the 100-member constituent assembly, half of which will be made up of MPs, the other half of figures from outside parliament. “Until 9 pm,” Bakri added, “only 250 votes had been counted. It is not expected that the counting will be finished until the early hours of Sunday 25 March.” Employees of the People’s Assembly’s Information Centre and the Central Agency for Statistics and General Mobilisation are in charge of processing the votes. “They will see how many votes each candidate got,” said Bakri.
Yet hours before the process was completed, the names of members were made public through a list distributed to members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) distributing copies of a list of names from parliament and outside, asking their colleagues to vote for that list. Early results show that the Islamist forces - mainly the FJP and the Salafist Nour Party - will dominate, with some 70 per cent of the assembly’s 100 members. The 50 MPs include 25 FJP MPs, 11 MPs from the Salafist Nour Party and 14 independent and non-Islamist party MPs. The 50 non-parliamentarians include constitutional law professors, prominent public figures, chairmen of political parties, religious clerics and others belonging to Islamist forces.
The initial list of the 50 parliamentarians includes: Parliamentary Speaker Saad El-Katatni (FJP); Chairman of Shura Council Ahmed Fahmi (FJP); Hussein Ibrahim (parliamentary spokesman of FJP); Ali Fath El-Bab (parliamentary spokesman of FJP in Shura Council); Susan Saad Zaghloul (FJP female member in Shura Council); El-Sayed Hozayen (FJP member in Shura Council); Taher Soliman (FJP member in Shura Council); Mohamed Talaat Khashaba (FJP member in Shura Council); Ezz eddin Abdel-Wahab Allam Hassan (FJP member in Shura Council); Mohamed Tousoun (FJP member in Shura Council); Ahmed Diab (FJP deputy in the People’s Assembly); Ahmed Abdel-Hadi (FJP deputy in PA); Osama Yassin ( FJP chairman of PA’s Youth Committee); Abbas Mokhaimar (independent MP and chairman of PA’s defence assembly); Youssri Hani (FJP MP in PA); Soliman Salem (FJP MP in PA); Sobhi Saleh (FJP deputy chairman of PA’s constitutional affairs committee); Tarek El-Dessouki (FJP chairman of PA’s economic affairs committee); Essam El-Erian (FJP chairman of PA’s foreign affairs committee); Farid Ismail (FJP deputy); Maher Ahmed (FJP shoura Council); Mohamed El-Beltagi (FJP deputy in PA); Hoda Ghania (FJP female member in PA); and Khaled Al-Azhari (FJP MP in PA); Ashraf Thabet (deputy parliamentary speaker - Nour party); Younis Makhyoun (Nour MP in PA); Talaat Marzouk (chairman of PA’s Complaints and Proposals Committee - Nour party); Adel Youssef Azazzi (Nour MP in PA); Shaab Abdel-Alim (Nour MP in PA); Shabaan Abdel-Alim (Nour MP in PA); Salah Abdel-Maboud (Nour MP in PA); Walid Abdel-Awal Mahmoud (Nour MP in PA); Mohamed Mansour (Nour MP in PA); Tarek El-Sihari (deputy chairman of Shura Council - Nour party); Abdel-Rahman Shoukri (FJP MP in PA); Abdel-Salam Ragheb (Nour member in Shura Council); Hassan Omar (Nour member in Shoura Council); Amr Hamzawy (liberal-oriented Independent); Amr El-Shobaki (liberal-oriented independent); Ahmed Said (chairman of the liberal-oriented Free Egyptians Party); Ziad Bahaa El-Din (MP from the Egyptian Democratic Socialist Party); Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat (chairman of PA’s Human Rights committee and chairman of the liberal Reform and Development Party); Mahmoud El-Sakka (Wafd MP in PA); Essam Sultan (deputy chairman of the moderate Islamist party); Margaret Azzar (Wafd party and christian female MP); Mahmoud El-Khdoeiri ( independent MP and chairman of the Assembly’s Legislative Affairs Committee); Wahid Abdel-Meguid (independent MP); Saad Abboud (leftist MP from the Nasserist Karama party); Mohamed Dawoud (Wafd party MP and deputy parliamentary speaker); Ihab El-Kharat (Christian chairman of Shura Council’s Human Rights Committee and member of the Egyptian Democratic Socialist Party); Hani Nour El-Din (MP from the Islamist Reconstruction and Development Party).
Non-parliamentarian members include some prominent figures such as Hussein Hamed Hassan (Sheikh Hassan of the Salafist Nour Party); Abdel-Rahman El-Bir (an Azhar Cleric); Osama Sayed Ahmed; Mohamed Ahmed El-Sherif; Abdel-Aziz Abdel-Shafi (a former football player from Al-Ahli sporting club); Rafik Samuel Habib (a Christian Coptic priest). They also include Ayman Ali Sayed Ahmed; Ahmed Ayman El-Marakbi; Gamal Nouara; Mohamed Abdel-Gawad (FJP economic expert); Mamdouh Al-Wali (chairman of the press syndicate); Atef El-Banna (a Cairo University constitutional law professor); Nasr Farid Wassel (former Grand Mufti of Egypt); Nadia Mostafa; Mohamed Emara ( an Islamist scholar); Abdel-Fattah Abdel-Tawab Khattab); Sherif Abdel-Azim; Abdallah Qandil; Ahmed Mohamed Khalifa; Abdel-Ghaffar Shukr (a leftist analyst and chairman of the Popular Socialist Alliance Party).
