“The president (Morsi) deliberately eliminated the Supreme Constitutional Court by reducing its role in the invalid constitution,” Gebali said, referring to Egypt’s recently adopted constitution. She said the General Assembly of the Constitutional Court nominates members and elects its president, and then submits that result to the president without interference from any authority. “The court has had a special chapter in the constitution until it was incorporated as one of the judicial bodies, which are mentioned in the current constitution but not specified,” she said.
“Now the president of the republic is entitled to choose the members [of the Court’s assembly], which means he has control over it. While there used to be 18 members, now there are 10, in addition to the court president,” said Gebali. She added that “the purpose was to exclude me and other judges although [the president] does not have the right to do so, and is violating the text that prevents sacking judges.”
“President Morsi planned to tighten control over the Constitutional Court by giving it the power to judge laws prior to their issuance and prevented it from examining laws already issued. It is well known that it is difficult to discover the flaw of a law before its application, which means that the constitution has reduced the guarantees given to citizens to protect their rights,” she said.
Cllr. Gebali said President Mohamed Morsi’s decisions are not made independently but are based on direction from his organization (the Muslim Brotherhood), including his decision to reinstate the parliament dissolved by the Constitutional Court. That decision (which he later retracted) was due to the Brotherhood’s desire to demolish the state of law, according to Gebali.
Gebali described Islamists’ siege of the Supreme Constitutional Court as “a black day in the life of the Egyptian state,” because the rule of law basically collapsed when judges were prevented from entering the court.
“The president is unable to manage the affairs of the country and issues decisions that no one respects, such as the decision to impose curfew in the strategic governorates of Suez and Port Said. But the people toppled this decision, which means there is no legitimacy for the ruling authority,” said Gebali.
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Edited from http://www.mcndirect.com/showsubject.aspx?id=42380#.URlvXaX3B9I
Speaking about the role of the opposition in Egypt, Gebali said, “The opposition has no genuine national dialogue through which it can reach national consensus for the management of Egypt.”
Asked about the lawsuit she filed against the new constitution, Gebali said it is being prepared and that no hearings have been determined. “I wrote what satisfies my conscience as a constitutional judge, and the decision of my dismissal was a personal advantage to file such a case to correct the deviation that occurred in the constitutional path.”
Commenting on the report published by The New York Times of an agreement between her and the army to not hand over power to civilians, Gebali called the report “suspicious” and said it “aimed at questioning the intention of the army to hand power over and to discredit the judiciary.”
“It targeted me explicitly because I accused and criticized American figures, including Hillary Clinton, because they wanted the Brotherhood to take the rule of Egypt,” she said.
President Morsi issued a constitutional declaration fortifying the Islamic draft constitution, which reduced the number of members of the Constitutional Court from 18 to 11 when he thought the court was issuing a ruling to invalidate the Constituent Assembly tasked with drafting the current constitution, after it dissolved the former parliament.
The reduction resulted in Gebali’s exclusion from the court.