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July 13th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Press TV in its program Middle East Today has conducted an interview with Ahmad Mousalli, Professor Political Science at the American University, Beirut, about the maneuvering of power between the Parties and Institutions in Egypt as President Morsi begins contesting his legitimacy.
The program also interviews former presidential candidate, Abdullah al-Ashaal from Egypt and Ali al-Kabbany, Egyptian political analyst from London. What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: Who is the winner of this tug of war after the parliament was reconvened and so on?
Mousalli: Well, in principle it’s not clear yet who is going to be the winner, we are still in the process of jockeying for power and I think it is a bit premature to say somebody has already won the case.
But in a way I think what the president has done in the meeting of the parliament is very indicative that they are contesting the legislative power of the higher Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) because with the inauguration of President Morsi what happened is that the executive power has been removed from the Military Council and it was kept with the legislative power and it was planning for a certain Constitution.
What has been done so far at least at the constitutional level is to contest the power of the military itself and even if the Constitutional Court has suspended or canceled the Presidential decree I don’t think it has a right to do so because of the issue of the separation of power.
The Constitutional Court can say that the decision or the electoral law was wrong and there were certain rules and therefore some of the members who were elected on an individual basis is incorrect, but it cannot take the decision to dissolve this…
Yes because the parliament is elected by the people not appointed by the court. It can contest a law and it can ask the government to do it again, but it cannot dissolve an already elected council even if it has a problem.
Press TV: So here is the question, it seems quite complex, but who is being constitutional here? Some have questioned the constitutional or legal backgrounds behind Mr. Morsi’s calling for the parliament to convene and others are talking about the Military Council…
Mousalli: You see, the problem is and let me briefly put it this way… When … Mubarak was removed he was replaced unconstitutionally by the Military Council – he should have been replaced by either his deputy who was General Omar Suleiman and if not, by the head of the Shab Council.
What happened was Mubarak appointed the Military Council without any Constitutional stipulation about his right to appoint somebody to rule when he is removed. So the first step was unconstitutional. Now, what happened subsequently is all constitutional because it is built on a very basic unconstitutional step.
However, because of the revolutionary zeal and the acceptance of the revolution that the Military Council will steer this period until there is a president that is elected when there is a parliament that is elected. And here what we see is that there is a contestation between the old regime and the revolution – between a revolutionary legitimacy and a bureaucracy.
The bureaucracy itself is trying to maintain its powers whether it’s a Constitutional Court or the State Council (Dowlat) or the Military Council all of them do not have the powers that they are using.
The Constitutional Court does not have the power to dissolve the parliament. It can say that would have to go to the Administrative Court to decide how to execute the decision by the Constitutional Court and even then it is the president who will decide when it is going to be dissolved and link it as he did to call for an election after 60 days after setting up the Constitution.
However, the importance of this step even if the Constitutional Court doesn’t accept it is that President Morsi and the Shab Council have now contested the legislative power of the Military Council, which is unconstitutional to begin with.
Press TV: Why did it take so long to speak about going into a new Constitution? Why wasn’t there a constitutional assembly; what are the elements that barred this from happening?
Mousalli: Because the Military Council has been playing different sides against each other and unfortunately the different players within the revolutionary movement in Egypt did fall into this.
Remember the campaign of scaring people from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, done by the military, done by a lot of the other groups? And I think also the Brotherhood did make some mistakes by saying something and doing its opposite.
And what we had was that the Military Council at the point when it had both the executive and legislative power was able to manipulate a lot of issues including the constitutional declaration where it is giving itself the power in terms of war and peace as well as its own budget – they didn’t want their own budget to be under civilian supervision.
So, the military, other than it is not constitutional, it is trying to maintain its own interest and you know the military has one-third of the whole Egypt economy; the military has its own companies, its own institutions – it’s like a state within a state.
Press TV: Do you think that Mr. Morsi was trying to create some kind of a system, a presidential system with the fact that we don’t know what the presidents real authority is?
Mousalli:Yes, you see, the problem is when the Military Council took over, nobody contested its power. When Mubarak appointed it, the people accepted it and I think that was a very good maneuver by Mubarak and his group and therefore the revolutionaries did not use the revolution to empower themselves with certain powers. And this is why the military has been able to manipulate them up until this point.
Now, what President Morsi has done and I think it is a very intelligent step: One, he said because this is his prerogative to dissolve the parliament, he linked it first to making a Constitution; and two, he gave it 60 days after that, which means by contesting the power of the military he is preventing the military to go ahead and impose the two points I mentioned to you about the budget and the other one.
That says now the contestation is moving down to the street again. What should have happened a year ago is happening right now. I totally agree with Mr. Kabbany in London that this is a point where the people should use their revolutionary legitimacy in order to structure and restructure.
And what you see and this is part of the problem, what we are seeing is overlapping powers – one is formal, bureaucratic, administrative, judicial power, which is part of the old regime and on the other hand we see a president, a parliament, a people as part of creating a new regime.
And these two are coming together at certain points, but definitely there are very different purposes for the future of Egypt.
So what he did now by doing this is taking back the issue not to the Constitution Court, but to the people.
Press TV: Do you think this show of power from the military is perhaps an indicator that there could be some kind of a coup from the military against the president, I mean, as they find it necessary?
Mousalli: Well, at this point it would be very difficult for the military to have a coup unless it is supported by outside powers – and especially as up till now Morsi is using his own prerogatives. The Council is a predator, you know, rather than having the right to do so.
Obviously, if you look back at the presidential election, the Military Council wanted Ahmed Shafiq; and the Constitutional Council wanted Ahmed Shafiq and so forth, but they couldn’t do it because they were feeling the eruption of the revolution again.
In this sense I doubt at this point that we will see it. Therefore we will see more attention and jockeying for power within the system itself.
The military will push to the limit in order to gain as much as possible whereas the revolutionaries will try also to push and so we are now in a process of pushing and pulling till we see who will get more, but ultimately the Military Council will not be able to continue doing what it has been doing.
Press TV: Do you think that in the new system, in a post-revolution system, we might see the other Parties along with Mr. Morsi that they can really succeed in this fight against the old regime?
Mousalli: I think definitely he is going to have more than one Party involved in pulling up the system in Egypt. And I think at this point he should take the decision concerning the Military Council, maybe changing the formation of the Military Council itself as well as the Constitutional and other courts, but this requires the existence of a government.
SC/HGH
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