- CAIRO: Egypt's military rulers said Wednesday that the country's first presidential elections since the ouster of longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak will be held by November at the latest, giving the country's emerging political groups up to eight months to organize.
The news came as the military announced a new 62-article interim constitution to replace the one suspended after the fall of Mubarak's regime on Feb. 11 in a popular uprising that rocked the region.
The presidential elections will be a held a month or two after September's parliamentary contests, the military said.
Many presidential hopefuls have already announced their plans to contest elections, including Nobel Prize laureate Mohamed El-Baradei, Arab League chief Amr Moussa, and longtime left-wing opposition politician Hamdeen Sabahi.
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the country's most organized group, said it will not nominate a candidate in the presidential elections.
The interim constitution comes 10 days after Egyptian voters overwhelmingly approved a package of constitutional amendments to respond to protesters' demands for reform. By giving a timetable for parliamentary and presidential elections, the army backed up its earlier commitment to swiftly transfer power to a civilian democratic authority.
However, many critics fear the rapid timetable would give a significant advantage to the most organized political forces in the country, namely the Muslim Brotherhood and members of the former ruling party and not allow enough time for newly emerging forces, especially among the youth, to develop their popular bases.
The interim constitution stipulates the creation of a committee of 100 legal experts, academics, politicians and professionals to be selected by the newly elected Parliament to draft a new constitution, which would then be approved by a referendum.
Despite demands by many of the youth groups behind the 18-day uprising, the new Parliament will keep a 50 percent quota of seats allocated to "farmers and workers," a holdover from the country's socialist past.
Amid intense debate about the identity of new Egypt, the new document emphasized Egypt's Islamic identity by stating in Article 2 that the state religion is Islam and the principle of the Islamic Shariah law is the main source of legislation. Article 4, however, bans political parties based on religious grounds.