Abbas swore in the new cabinet after
dismissing the Hamas-led Palestinian unity
government [AFP]
Senior lawyers who wrote the interim Palestinian constitution have said
Mahmoud Abbas, the president, exceeded his powers when he
appointed the new emergency cabinet.
Abbas replaced the unity government, led by Hamas's Ismail
Haniya, after the rival faction pushed security forces loyal to
the president out of the Gaza Strip.
Anis al-Qasem and Eugene Cotran, who began drafting the Basic Law more
than a decade ago, said it gave Abbas the power to dismiss
Haniya but did not allow him to appoint a new government without
parliamentary approval.
It is also does not permit him to suspend
articles of the Basic Law, as he did last month to spare Salam
Fayyad, the new prime minister, the need to win a vote in
parliament, they told Reuters news agency.
Abbas's office had no immediate comment on the lawyers' remark but
a spokesman for his Fatah party said at the weekend that the
president's word was law as long as Hamas had paralysed
parliament.
'Mutiny'
Jamal Nazzal, Fatah spokesman, was quoted on Palestine Radio
saying the Basic Law does not limit how often the president can
declare a state of emergency, so it can be extended "as long as
the mutiny which brought that situation about continues."
Azmi Shuaibi, who sat on a parliamentary committee on the Basic
Law, defended Abbas's power to suspend articles.
He said Article 113, which stipulates that the legislature "shall
not be dissolved or suspended during the emergency situation, nor
shall the provisions of this chapter be suspended," meant he "can
suspend articles in other chapters".
Al-Qasem disagreed, cautioning against making "such wild
implication ... particularly where the implication could easily
lead to dictatorship - the system that the Basic Law was intended,
in all its provisions, to guard against".
"They are obviously looking for the slimmest argument to build a
mountain on and dry the ocean. They are destroying the foundation
on which the Basic Law is laid," he told Reuters.
Al-Qasem and Cotran said the Basic Law further says that Haniya's
unity cabinet should remain the caretaker administration until
Abbas secured parliamentary approval for a new government.
Emergency
"What is clear is that ... the Haniya government, doesn't fall
during the period of an emergency," Cotran told Reuters.
The Basic Law has no specific provisions for an "emergency"
government, Al-Qasem added.
Al-Qasem and Cotran made their comments in a series of telephone
and email exchanges with the Reuters news agency over the past
week.
Ahmad Elkhaldi, a law professor who worked on drafts of the Basic
Law, said he was concerned Palestinian democracy was "in retreat".
A political independent who angered some in Fatah by serving as
justice minister in Haniya's first cabinet, Elkhaldi was briefly
abducted by armed men loyal to Fatah last month.
"They wanted to send me a message that 'you have to stop speaking
about who is right and who is wrong'," Elkhaldi said at Nablus's
al-Najah University.
"We have to work inside the restrictions of the Basic Law, not put
the Basic Law aside and do whatever we want."
