The much-ballyhooed political and legal reform initiatives that became law last week did not escape a certain parliamentary wrath. Gamal Essam El-Din reports Following months of intense debate in media and political circles, the People's Assembly finally approved the much-discussed political reform bills aimed at scrapping 1980's Law 105 on state security courts, abolishing the hard labour penalty enshrined in the penal code, and setting up a National Council for Human Rights (NCHR). The two bills emerged from the ruling National Democratic Party's (NDP) Policy Secretariat, led by Gamal Mubarak. Addressing the Assembly on the 15-article NCHR bill, Justice Minister Farouk Seif El-Nasr argued that respect for human rights in Egypt is guaranteed by the (September 1971) Constitution, as well as most of the rulings issued by the Supreme Constitutional Court over the last 25 years. "The NCHR is another guarantee aimed at protecting human rights and civil liberties. It also reflects President Hosni Mubarak and the ruling NDP's keen interest in broadening the scope of democratisation and deepening the respect for human rights in Egypt." Seif El-Nasr said the NCHR would be affiliated to the Shura Council -- a consultative upper house with no legislative powers. The council will be in charge of appointing NCHR members for a renewable term of three years. NCHR's functions, Seif El-Nasr explained, will be as diverse as mapping out a national plan for advancing human rights, verifying citizens' complaints regarding human rights abuses, and ensuring honest implementation of international treaties on human rights. Other functions include fostering a culture of human rights and presenting an annual report on the human rights situation to the president, the People's Assembly and the Shura Council. NCHR will be located in Cairo and empowered to have offices in different governorates. Seif El-Nasr's assurances notwithstanding, the assembly's approval of the NCHR bill was by no means smooth. The bill was attacked by a limited, but vociferous, number of opposition and independent MPs, and the debate continued into the early dawn hours of 16 June. The government ended up acquiescing to one collective demand: increasing the number of NCHR members from the initially proposed 21 to a new total of 27. The body will have a chairman (the chairman of the Shura Council), one deputy and 25 members. In order to be effective, argued the dissenting opposition and Muslim Brotherhood MPs, the NCHR must be fully independent, must cooperate, rather than combat human rights NGOs, act as a powerful institutional watchdog, and be accompanied by new initiatives aimed at democratising the political scene in general. Independence, according to opposition MPs, means that the government and the NDP must not manipulate the new organisation, making it little more than window-dressing for Egypt's image before the outside world. According to Adel Eid, an independent MP, respect for human rights does not require the setting up of a special council. "I'm afraid that this council will merely be used to embroider Egypt's image in the eyes of the outside world," Eid said. While most opposition MPs ended up voting for the bill, Eid abstained, his argument being that the bill was a matter of "much ado about nothing". Mohamed Abdel-Alim, a Wafdist MP, said "I hope from the bottom of my heart that this council is not designed to impress America more than to redress human rights abuses, especially in prisons and police stations." Ensuring the council's independence, argued opposition MPs, would have required it to be affiliated either to the People's Assembly or to the president. The Shura Council, they argued, is only independent in name, since 99 per cent of its deputies are members of the ruling NDP. Hamdi Hassan, a Brotherhood MP, said other Shura Council commissions have actually "acted against basic human rights. The Higher Press Council denies non-NDP political activists the right to produce their own publications, while the Political Parties Committee (established by 1977's Law 40) is aimed at intimidating citizens from establishing parties," Hassan said. According to Mounir Fakhri Abdel-Nour, spokesman for the Wafd bloc in parliament, the NCHR's Shura Council affiliation might be unconstitutional in the first place. "The constitution (Article 164) states that specialised national councils -- like the National Population Council or the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood -- must be created by presidential decrees rather than laws. This must apply to NCHR because it is a specialised council," Abdel-Nour said. Actually, argued Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Kamal El-Shazli, the NCHR is not a specialised council. "Specialised councils are empowered to share in the mapping out of government development plans. This does not apply to the NCHR because it is merely a consultative council with no power to draw up any plans. That is why President Mubarak opted for it to be created by a law rather than a presidential decree," El-Shazli said. Seif El-Nasr said the decision to affiliate the NCHR to the Shura Council was based on Article 194 of the Constitution, "to study and propose whatever is necessary to uphold public freedoms, civil liberties and human rights". Seif El-Nasr also indicated that the NCHR couldn't be affiliated to the president because international regulations governing the creation of human rights commissions state that they must not be affiliated to the executive (which, in Egypt, is headed by the president of the republic). Joining forces with El-Shazli and Seif El-Nasr, Assembly Speaker Fathi Sorour said the Shura Council is an independent upper house of parliament. "NCHR's affiliation to the Shura Council will merely be administrative. The commission's annual reports will be presented to, and discussed by, the People's Assembly. This will reinforce its independence and promote its cause," Sorour said. Other than the issue of independence, opposition MPs also expressed their concern regarding the new body's mere consultative role. "This will confirm suspicions that the NCHR will merely serve as democratic decor," said independent MP Mohamed Qiwita. Khaled Mohieddin, leader of the leftist Tagammu Party, warned that ordinary citizens will lose confidence in the NCHR unless it leads to genuine respect for human rights, especially in prisons and police stations. Basically, Brotherhood MPs seemed to view the creation of the NCHR as a very modest step on the long road towards democratisation and full respect for human rights. A basic package of political reforms, they said, must quickly be put into place in order to strengthen the body's performance. These steps include the repeal of the Emergency Law, the scrapping of military tribunals, an end to the rigging of elections, the broadening of freedoms of speech and demonstration, and a halt to the arbitrary detention of political activists. "Unless these reforms are adopted, the NCHR will end up being just another bureaucratic institution like so many others," said El-Sayed Hozayen, a Brotherhood MP. "It could even end up being a nightmare," said independent MP Hamdeen Sabahi. Seif El-Nasr's argument was that it was impossible for the NCHR to have any kind of authority "because this will place it in confrontation with the judicial authority, which is solely empowered with imposing penalties." As for the Emergency Law, El-Shazli called it a preventive tool aimed at intimidating terrorists. NDP MPs, meanwhile, heaped praise on Gamal Mubarak's Policy Secretariat, and encouraged the NCHR to stand up to NGOs that exploit the human rights issue to tarnish Egypt's image. Gamal Abu Zikri, an NDP official and a former police officer, said human rights NGOs must be placed under the supervision of NCHR. The scrapping of 1980's Law 108 on state security courts and the abolishment of the hard labour penalty were also finally approved in the early hours of 17 June. The law stipulates that state security courts be cancelled and their specialised jurisdiction transferred to the ordinary courts mentioned in the original Law on Criminal Procedures (Law 150/1950). Heated debate ensued on this matter as well. Opposition and independent MPs were infuriated by two facts: that the cancellation of state security courts did not include state security courts established under the Emergency Law (Law 162/ 1958); and that the sweeping powers which the public prosecution acquired through Law 108 -- such as holding citizens in custody for long, indefinite periods pending investigation of charges -- will be retained by the new bill. These powers will be transferred to the Criminal Procedures Law. Brotherhood MP speaker Mohamed Mursi said he could not support the bill in this form "because most of these sweeping powers stand against basic human rights". Hozayen said the government's motivation was more about making it easier for other countries to hand over those who have been convicted of bank fraud over the last few years rather than a genuine interest in human rights reform. Seif El-Nasr's response was that the new law would cancel most of the sweeping powers provided to prosecutors by Law 108. "This, for example includes crimes committed by political parties or crimes of violating obligatory pricing of food commodities," he said. The remaining powers, he added, would be confined to dealing with just five dangerous crimes: terrorism; theft of public money (such as looting of banking deposits); spying on Egypt from within or outside the country; and carrying explosives. "As the penalties for such highly dangerous crimes are so stiff that offenders are usually sentenced to prison for life, why shouldn't we provide prosecutors with powers to bring these crimes in check," Seif El-Nasr said. Though sharp, the opposition's attacks failed to compel the government to change any of the law's 12 articles. Independent and opposition MPs also argued that the third of the policy reform initiatives -- the revocation of Penal Code Article 14 pertaining to hard labour -- was insignificant since the hard labour penalty has not been applied in Egypt since 1956. They demanded that supervision of prisons must be the prerogative of the Justice Ministry instead of the Interior Ministry.
