Mubarak Party Back In Politics

Ex-president Hosni Mubarak's former-NDP henchmen are back in business after a Cairo court overturned a ruling banning them from holding office on Monday. The judgement means that Mubarak's closest confidantes can now take part in the upcoming parliamentary race.The ruling flies in the face of an earlier ruling by the Cairo Court for Urgent Matters which banned former National Democratic Party members from taking part in future election bouts.

The news comes just weeks before parliamentary elections are set to take place. In an earlier ruling, judges reasoned that the NDP had passed laws that violated the constitution and ignored court rulings. The court stated that the party was dissolved by a previous court ruling in 2011 following Mubarak's ouster and its return to political life will pose a threat to Egypt and anger Egyptians.

However the new verdict gives the green light for former party members to run in elections, many of whom have faced various accusations of corruption and profiteering. The 2012 constitution committee had green-lighted a constitutional article prohibiting citizens who were members of the NDP in the last 10 years of Mubarak’s rule from running in elections. However the constitutional committee formed following the ouster of the Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi decided against an article that excludes any group from running for an electoral position.