CAIRO — Egypt’s parliament met Tuesday to select a 100-member panel that will draft a new constitution, but the process got off to a bumpy start when liberal lawmakers boycotted the session.

The joint meeting of the body’s lower and upper chambers, which are both dominated by Islamists, was called by military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi after negotiations between political factions to agree on the makeup of the panel reached a deadlock.

A court ruling has disbanded a previous panel that was packed with Islamists. Liberal lawmakers say the Islamists were again seeking to dominate the new panel, and have filed a court case to declare the body illegal.

The powers of Egypt’s key state institutions have been the subject of intense dispute since a military council suspended the old constitution and took power when Hosni Mubarak stepped down in February 2011 in the face of a popular uprising.

The different factions are as much at odds over the process of drawing up a new constitution as they are over how the country should be governed in the interim. “It’s Egypt’s constitution we are talking about here,” said Ahmed Said, leader of the secularist Free Egyptians party. “The math of majority and minority should not apply.”

Other non-Islamist lawmakers said the constitution drafting process may have been unconstitutional because parliament hurriedly adopted legislation late on Monday night to govern the selection and work of the panel. They saw the move as an attempt by the Islamists, led by the powerful Muslim Brotherhood, to head off a possible court ruling disbanding the new panel. — AP