Supreme court rules Egypt's lower house be dissolved

Egypt’s supreme court has ordered that parliament’s lower house be dissolved following a ruling that last year’s election was unconstitutional.

It has ruled that a third of seats elected under the “first-past-the-post” system were “illegitimate”.

In a separate ruling, the court has decided that former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq can continue to run for president in elections this weekend.

The court rejected a law that would have barred him from standing.

Mr Shafiq is standing against the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Mursi. The pair are in a tight run-off following a first round of elections in May.

The court was considering the validity of last year’s parliamentary election, because some of the seats were contested on a proportional list system, others on the first-past-the-post system.

According to the official Mena news agency: “The constitutional court affirmed in the details of its verdict that the parliamentary elections were not constitutional, and the entire composition of parliament has been illegitimate since its election.”