After years of political controversy, reports by the Attorney General, and the issue being debated in the corridors of the courts in the aftermath of the July 2013 coup, the Egyptian judiciary decided to dissolve the "Construction and Development" party, the political wing of the Islamic Group.
This came after the Political Parties ’Department of the Supreme Administrative Court of the State Council accepted yesterday (Saturday) the request of the Political Parties Affairs Committee (government) to dissolve the Construction and Development Party, liquidate its funds and transfer them to the public treasury.
The Political Parties Affairs Committee accused the party of violating clauses II, III, IV, V and VI of Article 4 of the Political Parties Law No. 40 of 1977 and amended by Decree Law No. 12 of 2011, which the party has repeatedly denied.
Article 4 stipulates in a part of its text, “The party's principles, goals, programs, policies, or methods do not contradict its activities with the basic principles of the constitution or the requirements for protecting Egyptian national security, or preserving national unity, social peace, and democratic order.”
The State Commissioners Authority of the Supreme Administrative Court had recommended in a previous session the acceptance of the appeal and the dissolution of the Construction and Development Party, based on its allegations that it funded the terrorist groups, and that a number of terrorist groups belonged to it, she said.
In June 2017, the Construction and Development Party decided to accept the resignation of its president, Tariq Al-Zumar, after his name was included in the list of terrorism issued by Egypt, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain after imposing a siege on Qatar, noting that "he always calls for peaceful opposition, national unity and comprehensive social reconciliation."
A political decision
Commenting, the former head of the Egyptian Construction and Development Party, Tariq Al-Zomor, described the justifications presented by the Committee of Parties Affairs in Malafka, indicating that the party's accusation of terrorism is a claim that does not have a single evidence and contradicts the principles and literature of the party.
In a statement to Al-Jazeera Net, Al-Zumar confirmed that the ruling is not surprising, as the ruling military regime does not accept any opposition, even if it calls for reason and wisdom to end the state of political congestion, accusing the ruling regime of excluding everyone by fabricating the charges arbitrarily and stigmatizing them with terrorism.
Regarding the party’s next step, he indicated that “the helm leadership is left to the party’s leadership inside (Egypt), especially after I submitted my resignation from the party’s presidency in May 2017 so that I don’t leave them (the system) as an excuse to dissolve the party.”
And the number of the party's positions during the course of his career, which he emphasized that it had not ended, describing them as historical positions to advance the public interest, as it was the party that ceded its seats in the Constituent Assembly to the Constitution in 2012 in favor of liberal forces, and it is the party that adopted the Copts ’problems and defended them as national demands and not Sectarianism, and other national initiatives.
In November 2018, the Official Gazette of Egypt published a judgment issued by the Cairo Criminal Court to include the Islamic Group on the list of terrorist entities.
The court ruled that the Islamic Group be included in the list of terrorist entities, and that 164 leaders and members of this group be included in the terrorist list for a period of five years.
Nationalization of political work,
in turn, the media advisor for the Construction and Development Party Khaled Al-Sharif denounced the decision, saying that "the current authority has killed politics in Egypt and its nation for the sake of the ruler", noting that the Construction and Development Party enriched political action, and launched 15 political initiatives to solve the crisis in Egypt, the last of which was The initiative to solve the crisis in Sinai, but it has been proven to all that the Authority does not want political solutions to crises.
In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, he emphasized that the party took all legal measures and responded with evidence and evidence for the memorandum of the Committee of Parties, and neither one of the party leaders nor its members was involved in violence, on the contrary, he always sought to fight violence and extremist ideas, and he had a pioneering experience in Intellectual Reviews and Integration into Political Life.
In turn, the Egyptian researcher in the affairs of Islamic movements, Ahmad Mawlana, saw that the ruling comes within the context of nationalizing political work in Egypt after the coup, and the steps for implementing this were done gradually, leading to the arrest of some of those who oppose the regime while acknowledging its legitimacy, as happened in the case of the organization of imprisonment held by Ziad. Al-Alimi and others.
In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, he added that the solution to the decision is a political achievement in general, although it represents an escalation by the regime against the Islamic group, which is keen to adopt a calm language toward the regime.
Contrary to the constitution,
on the other hand, the Egyptian Member of Parliament, Muhammad Abdullah Zain Al-Din, described the dissolution of the Construction and Development Party as a blow to all terrorist and atheist currents, groups, and entities, particularly the terrorist Brotherhood, according to him.
"This ruling resolved the file of the parties based on a religious basis," Zineddine said in an official statement, calling for the dissolution of all the parties based on religious grounds, which include elements of the terrorist Brotherhood and all terrorist organizations, groups and currents that emerged from the womb of this "rogue" group, especially since The constitution prohibits the creation of political parties on a religious basis, as he put it.
In June 2011, the Egyptian Islamic Group announced the establishment of the Development and Building Party, its official political wing, through a number of prominent members of the Islamic Group in Egypt, headed by Tareq Al-Zomor and Safwat Abdel-Ghani.
Among the most prominent items in the party’s program are support for a new political system based on the principles of freedom, justice, pluralism, equality and the peaceful transfer of power, the promotion of legal, constitutional and political reform, and the modern application of Islamic law.