Egypt’s Islamist party official set to be new parliament speaker

Leading Egyptian political parties will back a senior figure in the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) for the assembly’s speaker with another Islamist group and a liberal party taking the deputy posts, an FJP official said on Monday. The FJP, which secured the biggest bloc in a parliamentary election, is proposing its Secretary-General Mohamed al-Katatni for speaker, the head of the Brotherhood’s party Mohamed Morsi said after parties met. Under the agreement reached between the main parties which included liberal and Islamists groups, the two deputy speaker posts would go to the Islamist al-Nour party, runners up in the vote, and the liberal Wafd party, one of the next biggest groups. Full results have yet to be announced because votes in some areas are going to be run again, but the broad result of the staggered election that began in November is already clear. Parliament gathers for its first session on Jan. 23. Human Rights Watch on Monday urged Egypt’s new parliament to scrap laws dating from the Mubarak regime that curb freedoms and “shield” official abuse. “Egypt’s newly elected parliament should urgently reform the arsenal of laws used by the Mubarak government to restrict freedoms,” the watchdog said in a report released just days before parliament is due to hold its first session. “These laws were used to curb free expression and criticism of government, limit association and assembly, detain people indefinitely without charge, and shield an abusive police force from accountability,” HRW said in a statement. The HRW report, “The Road Ahead: A Human Rights Agenda for Egypt’s New Parliament,” identifies nine sectors that need urgent reform -- namely the penal code, associations law, assembly law and the despised emergency law. The report took to task Egypt’s military rulers, saying they failed to keep a pledge to reform the laws and “relied on them to arrest protesters and journalists and to try over 12,000 civilians before military courts.” It specifically mentioned the 30-year old emergency law, saying the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces expended in September the scope of its application since taking over from Mubarak.