Egypt’s first post-Mubarak parliament holds session

CAIRO — With Islamists making up the overwhelming majority of its lawmakers, the parliament elected in Egypt‘s first legislative vote after President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster nearly a year ago held its inaugural session on Monday.

The convening of the new parliament is a significant benchmark in the timetable provided by the generals who took over from Mr. Mubarak for the handover of power to a civilian administration.

It is also a step forward for Islamist groups on the road to becoming the strongest political force in the nations that experienced Arab Spring revolts. Islamists dominated elections first in Tunisia and then in Egypt, and Libya’s Islamists also are expected to do well in parliamentary voting later this year.

The Egyptian chamber’s top priority is to elect a 100-member panel to draft a new constitution, which will have to be put to a vote in a nationwide referendum.

The parliament elected in Egypt’s first legislative vote after President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster nearly a year ago holds its inaugural session on Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Cairo. (AP Photo/Khaled Elfiqi, Pool)

The next major step in the transition will be presidential elections, scheduled to be held before the end of June, when the generals are due to step down.

“The era of political exclusion is over,” said Saad el-Katatni, an Islamist lawmaker from the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt‘s largest and best-organized political group. He was expected to win the position of speaker.

The Brotherhood has been banned for most of its 84-year history, legalized only after the 18-day popular uprising in early 2011 that ousted Mr.  Mubarak.

Elections that started on Nov. 28 and ran into January were the freest in Egypt‘s modern history. Elections for parliament’s upper chamber, a largely toothless body known as the Shura Council, will begin later this month.

The outcome of the elections reflects the strength of the Islamists in Egypt, a mainly Muslim nation of some 85 million people that has grown steadily more religiously conservative over the past 40 years.

The Brotherhood spearheaded the Islamist victory in Egypt, winning just under half of all seats.

In second place to the Brotherhood came another Islamist group, the ultraconservative Salafis, with nearly a quarter of the seats.

The liberal and left-leaning groups that organized the anti-Mubarak uprising garnered less than 10 percent of the seats. Many of them were not as well prepared for the vote as the Islamists, particularly the Brotherhood, the members of which, through years of underground work, have acquired a high degree of discipline and loyalty.

Several of these lawmakers wore yellow scarves saying, “No to military trials for civilians,” a reference to the hauling of at least 12,000 civilians before military tribunals since the generals took over power in February last year.

The Islamists’ dominance was obvious in Monday’s session, where many lawmakers sported long beards, clerical turbans or flowing robes.

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