now shares his brother's fate -- both have been ejected from the People's Assembly. Yet, as Karim El-Khashab discovers, the speed of action taken against sitting MPs is far from consistent On 29 May, the People's Assembly expelled , a nephew of the former president Anwar El-Sadat, following a court ruling declaring him bankrupt. Parliament had been unusually quick to act on the issue. Only 48 hours separated the initial indictment and El-Sadat's expulsion. Talaat El-Sadat, Anwar El-Sadat's brother and fellow parliamentarian for the Menoufiya governorate, had earlier been sentenced to a one-year prison term for insulting the armed forces, after he hinted that the army had played a role in the assassination of his uncle. The two brothers are not strangers to controversy. In the years following the assassination of President Sadat they have faced several counts of fraud and other crimes relating to their business transactions. Sometimes they appeared to court notoriety. Campaigning in Menoufiya they once made headlines by hiring a lion from the national circus to appear with them on the campaign trail. Former president Sadat's immediate family has been keen to distance itself from its maverick cousins. The former president's son Gamal, chairman of Egypt's third mobile licencee Itisalat, has released several statements condemning the comments and actions of both former parliamentarians, and their alleged exploitation of Sadat's name. The speed of 's expulsion from parliament surprised many, not least of them, the one-time MP. "This issue had been rumbling on for months," he said. "Why then accelerate it now, and with such extraordinary speed?" Sadat was in Qatar where he was due to attend a conference when he received a call from People's Assembly speaker Fathi Sorour summoning him back to Egypt. A date had been set for the assembly to hear his case, Sorour told Sadat, and he should be present. Yet before leaving for Qatar, says Sadat, he had cleared the trip with Sorour. The case against Sadat began when the former member of parliament issued cheques to guarantee the activities of one of his companies. When the company folded, creditors attempted to cash their guarantees. After lengthy legal wrangling, Sadat paid a proportion of the money owed and was declared bankrupt. The case was then sent to the People's Assembly's Legislative Committee, charged with, among other things, upholding the stipulation that all members be of sound reputation. The issue was then put to a vote, with only 87 MPs siding with their colleague. Sadat sounded defiant before the assembly. "I know that this case is not about bankruptcy or applying the law," he told MPs. "It is a political case to silence those who speak out against corruption. I don't blame [NDP members] for their actions. I know they are following orders from above." Independent MP Kamal Ahmed told Al-Ahram Weekly that the way action against Sadat had been rushed through the assembly was "almost farcical". "When you have MPs with dual nationalities, MPs facing charges of fraud and worse, and this is the one case in which they choose to proceed according to the book, then the situation has become ridiculous," he said, naming Shura Council appointee Mamdouh Ismail, owner of the unseaworthy ferry that sank last year claiming the lives of more than 1,300 Egyptians, as a case in point. Ahmed also pointed out that Hani Sorour, owner of Hydelina, the company implicated in the distribution of contaminated blood bags, continues as an MP. But Sadat is not the only parliamentarian whose status has come under threat. Heidar Baghdadi also faces expulsion following the circulation of video tapes that show him in what he describes, somewhat disingenuously, as "indecent circumstances". What Baghdadi and Sadat have in common, point out commentators, is that both have been vociferous critics of the government, especially over corruption in the Hydelina case, the fixing of iron and steel prices, and alleged government graft in the Ain Sokhna port project. Ahmed believes that in spearheading anti- corruption campaigns, both men crossed a red line and the speed with which action was taken against Sadat is intended as a warning to others who might be tempted to point a finger at senior officials and their cronies. "There is a certain point beyond which you cannot go unless you are willing to be ground into mincemeat by the system," says Ahmed. Amal Othman, who heads the Legislative Committee, insists that the actions against Sadat were "in accordance with the rules". Cases against other MPs, she says, have progressed at less speed because the "committee is waiting for the evidence to be complete before moving any further".
