Egypt will hold presidential elections in summer 2014

Egypt will be holding presidential elections early in summer next year, Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy said on Friday.

Parliamentary elections are due in February or March, two months after a vote on a new constitution currently being drafted by a 50-member panel Fahmy told Reuters.

The constitutional panel tasked to draft the new constitution is due to finish its work next week, the minister said, with an expected referendum in December.

“So you’re looking at elections in the summer for president, that’s the last step,” Fahmy said.

The 50-member assembly has also proposed to scrap the upper house of parliament or ‘shura council,’ but the decision is not final yet.

The country’s political roadmap was put in place by an interim government following the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated President Mohammed Mursi’s ouster by the military in July, after a wave of protests demanding his resignation.

The Egyptian minister also said that the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Freedom and Justice Party is “still legal in Egypt” and free to participate in the parliamentary election, according to Reuters.

An Egyptian court banned the Muslim Brotherhood group, from carrying out any activities in the country and ordered the seizure of the group’s funds in September.

Following Mursi’s removal from power, authorities have launched a crackdown on his supporters in which more than 1,000 were killed in clashes and about 2,000 Brotherhood members arrested.

(With Reuters)