Minister of Legal Affairs and Representative Councils Dr. Mufeed Shehab ensured during his meeting in Alexandria with NDP leaders that the constitutional amendments are considered a significant step that expresses inspirations of the Egyptian people. He added that such amendments determine the political, economic and social conditions. In the framework of the democratic dialogue between the NDP and the partisan base in Egypt's governorates to perform political reforms, these amendments will be put for referendum next April, Shehab said.

These amendments will be referred to the Legislative and Constitutional Committee starting from 18/02/2007 after the agreement of the general committee in the People's Assembly.

Shehab pointed out that these Constitutional amendments have an economic dimension, as it drives to augment the compete ability of the Egyptian economy, attract foreign investments, open fields for governorates throughout the local councils.

In these amendments, some of specialties of the authorities of president of the republic will be transferred to the prime minister and powers of the Peoples' Assembly will be expanded, Shehab declared, made it clear that manner of electing the president will be amended to warrant an expanded participation by all political parties.

For his part, secretary-general of the NDP in Alexandria in reply to a question that citizenship contradicts the second Article of the Constitution, he said that Islam is the basic source of legislation, as the Constitution is not just a text, but a practice and a behavior. The second article is a lawful concept derived from the Islamic general culture of the state.

Most of the participating opposition parties gave their agreement in the conference. It included Al-Wafd, Tagamou, Ahrar, Al-Wefaq and Nasserist parties who agreed to activate the citizenship principle proposed in the Constitutional amendments. They confirmed that citizenship targets equality among citizens.