SCAF passes ban on Mubarak-era officials

Egypt's ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), led by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, has approved amendments on a political rights law, dubbed by Egyptian media the “political isolation law”. The new law bars officials from ousted president Hosni Mubarak's regime from exercising their political rights for 10 years as of January 25, 2011. Informed sources said to Egyptian television news channels that the law will be applied on April 26, 2011, one day after the deadline for appeals on the presidential elections, which will allow candidates Ahmed Shafik and Amr Moussa to continue their presidential campaign. Legal experts warned that if the law was issued before the date of the final declaration of the electoral lists, Ahmed Shafik would be excluded, and if Shafik filed an appeal that the law was unconstitutional and if it was accepted in court, then he would have been ruled out from the elections with no legal basis, threatening to abolish the presidential elections as a whole.