The Arabist

The Arabist

By Issandr El Amrani and friends.

The MB on why a judicial purge is needed

Nour writes in with this link to IkhwanOnline, where this article "The Judges or the Revolution makes the following arguments:

1) Judges are allowed to join state institutions, so can a judge be fair in a case that involves a company or a ministry where he works as an adviser?
2) Raising the retirement age for them was to make sure that Mubarak's men kept their posts for as long as possible.
3) Nepotism: about 60 percent of judges belong to the 75 families (that's not so bad, keeping in mind that nepotism is literally everywhere).
4) Dissolving the parliament, rejecting the constitutional declaration, refusing to appoint a new prosecutor-general, letting ex-regime figures walk, etc.
5) Unfair perks, from gifts (which ex prosecutor-general admitted to receiving but the Supreme Judges Council didn't even question him about it) to LE3000 each for medical expenses, despite the fact that the judges and their families' healthcare is covered by the state. Article claims that their medical expenses alone cost the state LE50 million a month.

Meanwhile, the vice-president of the State Council tells the press that the MB is provoking the judges' anger in order to get them to boycott supervision of the parliamentary elections.