Former MPs announce "shadow parliament"

Egypt got its first-ever shadow parliament as opposition members demonstrated on the stairs of the State Council building today

Former parliament members and opposition leaders announced on Monday the creation of Egypt's first-ever shadow parliament. The move comes in response to what the opposition called “blatant” and “widespread” rigging of the recent parliamentary elections, where the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) scored a sweeping victory with 86 per cent of parliament's 508 seats.
The entire opposition bloc won approximately three per cent, a significant decrease compared to its 25 per cent in the outgoing parliament.
Both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wafd party pulled out of the elections two days after the first round on 28 November in protest of “irregularities” favouring NDP candidates.
The situation put the Wafd in a more or less confrontational stand with the NDP, in sharp contrast to the friendlier relationship the two had prior to the elections. Back then, senior NDP figures were quoted as saying that the Wafd will probably increase its representation in the 2015- 2015 parliament.
Today's shadow parliament announcement follows a series of “coordination meetings" between various MPs from several political streams, discussing which steps to take to “discredit” the parliament. They staged a protest yesterday in front of the Supreme Court, together with the anti-Hosni Mubarak Kifaya movement and several other dissent groups, including Mohamed El-Baradei's National Association for Change (NAC), the 6th of April group.
Today, the same group held a protest in front of the State Council, where they made the surprise announcement of the shadow parliament.
Speaking to Ahram Online, former MP Saad Aboud said: “We do not recognize the new parliament that was elected in an illegitimate and unfair election, we will create our own People's Assembly.”
The new shadow parliament will consist of more than 110 former MPs who ran in the 28 November election and lost, who according to former MP Mustafa Bakri, will be joined by an unspecified number of opposition figures.
The location of the demonstration – in front of the State Council – is a political statement to the authorities, Abboud said, in reference to a series of court orders issued prior to and during the elections to stop voting in dozens of electoral constituencies. The elections went ahead anyway, triggering debate on the legitimacy of the new parliament. On 4 December, the eighth High Administrative Court issued a verdict making null and void the results in all the constituencies where court rulings were issued to stop the vote.
The authorities defied the judicial power by ignoring these court verdicts, Abboud added.
During the demonstration, the former MPs who were present "swore" into the shadow parliament as reporters rushed to snap photos and film the event.
Although a few former Muslim Brotherhood MPs also took the "oath of office," the group's official position regarding the shadow parliament remains vague.
Saad El-Katatny, the former parliamentary speaker of the Brotherhood bloc (which constituted 20 per cent of the outgoing parliament with 88 MPs), said his group is still "studying" the idea and has yet to decide if it wants to be part of the shadow parliament.
He told Ahram Online that the MPs who announced the shadow parliament ought to have examined the idea more thoroughly "and figured out how it was going to operate in the future."
The shadow parliament will consist of the same number of committees as in the People's Assembly and will have a "legislative agenda" that will be discussed on a weekly basis, according to former MP Gamal Zahran.
The former MP also told Ahram Online that the same group will also form a "shadow government" consisting of "public figures" early next year.