On balance, it may be a good thing that a court in Egypt has suspended the parliamentary elections scheduled for next month. Though the country is still tense, with violence in particular in Port Said, the April elections looked to be a dangerous new flashpoint since the opposition parties had vowed to boycott the ballot. Whatever else it achieves, the effect of the ruling by the Cairo Administrative Court that the election be postponed gives all sides breathing space to reconsider their positions and hopefully find a negotiated settlement of their differences. The court's ruling was based on a significant technicality which was that the upper house of parliament, the Shoura Council, had returned the law under which April's elections were to be held to the president Mohamed Morsi for ratification rather than to the Supreme Constitutional Court, whose job is to give it a final review. Initially the president's office seemed prepared to come out fighting against the decision with a presidential spokesman saying that the Cairo court's ruling would be appealed. However, within a few hours more thoughtful arguments appear to have prevailed. Morsi's legal team later said that it would respect the court's decision. In a Tweeted message, the president reaffirmed that he would “respect the constitution, rule of law and separation of powers.” This has the double benefit of making it clear that the president is committed to the rule of law while giving much-needed time to continue talking with the opposition leaders. The risk clearly is that the hiatus could prompt further street violence which will allow the army to bolster its security role thus enhancing the possibility of a military coup. It remains to be seen how the court-ordered delay will sit with the new constitution which was passed in a referendum in December. This stipulated that new elections should be held within two months. Given that the ballot would have already been two months late, and that this has not been challenged, it may be hoped that no legal action will be initiated against what must now be elections for the lower house in May or more probably, according to local analysts, in June. Unfortunately, the Egyptian opposition, rather than lauding Morsi's bending to the ruling of the judges in the Cairo Administrative Court, have renewed their attacks on the president and his Muslim Brotherhood party arguing that they are mismanaging the country and bent on seeking a monopoly of power and an end to Egypt's newfound democracy. The Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, who heads the opposition National Salvation Front accused Morsi of running a “fascist state” and of “an epic failure of governance”. It is surely time that ElBaradei and his political allies considered that in their threatened boycott of the April ballot and their continued refusal to engage in the political process, they are themselves guilty of an epic failure of opposition. Many Egyptians struggled and died to achieve a pluralist state in which the will of the majority of electors would prevail for the term of a presidency and a parliament. It does not wash to withdraw from the democratic process on the grounds that your opponents are likely to win and to accuse them of seeking to instal themselves in power permanently. Had the NSF been in office now and the Muslim Brotherhood been protesting that secular forces were trying to guarantee their own tenure of power, ElBaradei's dismissal of their claims would have surely been scathing.
