CAIRO - The gap between the nation's Islamists on one hand and the interim government and the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces on the other hand seems to be widening, in the wake of the Islamists expressing strong reservations about a package of supra-constitutional principles that the Government wants the nation's political powers to endorse, just weeks before the nation goes to the polls on November 28. A governmental source told the local daily Al-Masry Al-Youm that the Islamists, spearheaded by the Muslim Brotherhood, are working hard to counter efforts made by Deputy Prime Minister Ali el-Selmi to make Egypt's political powers agree to the package. "Meanwhile, the Government is working with the military council to counter the opposition of the Islamists to the principles," the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the newspaper. El-Selmi came under intense fire from the Islamists last week when he gathered political powers to discuss a Government-authored bill of rights, a document that contains the principles that should govern Egypt's next Constitution. Some political powers, including the Islamists, objected in particular to articles in the bill, giving the armed forces the right to agree on arms deals without parliamentary supervision. They said the bill gives the armed forces a kind of sovereignty they should not enjoy in a democratic Egypt where the people have the upper hand in matters of government. In expressing these reservations, the Islamists seem to have pitted themselves against the Army, which says the military knows its needs well, while Parliament should not have any power in deciding these needs. "The military might decide to buy expensive weapons simply because it knows what it needs these weapons for," said Gamal Mazloum, a former army general on Monday. "Parliament might think that the Army is squandering money by doing this, but this might not be the case at all," he added in a phone interview with Al Jazeera Live, a special channel, launched by the freewheeling Al Jazeera Channel in the wake of the Egyptian revolution. Convincing as it might be, this argument means nothing to the Islamist powers, which have a strong following on the streets of this country. Apart from rejecting the bill of rights in principle, they are totally against exempting any State institution from parliamentary censorship. The Muslim Brotherhood have been in consultations with their stricter Salafist allies, an ultra-conservative group of Islamists who are more focused on the punitive parts of Islamic laws in their parliamentary election campaigning. Both groups say they will stage major demonstrations across the nation against the supra-constitutional principles on November 18. "In doing his best to impose the bill, the Deputy Prime Minister seems to promoting a special agenda of his own," said Mohamed Saad Al-Katatni, the Secretary-General of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party. "He might also be under pressure from other people to impose this agenda," he told the local daily Al-Shorouk. So far, the Army has not spoken openly about the issue, but some people expect to see its confrontation with the Islamists grow in the next few days. These people say Egypt's regimes have always had brief moments of peace with the nation's Islamists, always followed by enmity and crackdowns. Whether post-revolution Egypt is still fertile ground for this enmity is a question the future conduct of the Army and the Government might answer.
