The often sedate Shura Council faces a stormy two weeks before adjourning on 24 April, reports Gamal Essam El-Din National Democratic Party (NDP) candidates for the mid-term Shura Council elections began submitting their nominations at the party's provincial offices on Tuesday. The six-day nomination period opened after the Interior Ministry announced that President Hosni Mubarak will call for elections on 10 May. While previous Shura Council elections have been boycotted by opposition parties, allowing the NDP a clean sweep, this year could be different. On Sunday the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood said it intended to field up to 30 candidates, mostly in the Delta governorates of Sharqiya, Gharbiya, Daqahliya and Beheira. Leading Brotherhood member Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh told Al-Ahram Weekly that "although the council clearly lacks effective powers and recent constitutional amendments make it much easier for the ruling NDP to rig the elections now that full judicial supervision has been eliminated the Brotherhood still has an interest in fielding candidates." "These hopefuls will refrain from raising the Brotherhood's usual election slogan Islam is the solution, which clearly runs counter to amendments to Article 5 of the constitution which now bans parties based on religion," said Abul-Fotouh. He added that should "Brotherhood candidates be able to register successfully voters will easily recognise that they belong to the group." Legal opposition parties are once again expected to boycott the elections given the high cost of fielding candidates and the Shura Council's minimal role in political life. Last week a coalition of civil society organisations announced plans to monitor more than 80 per cent of polling stations during the vote. Elections will take place in 23 of Egypt's 26 governorates -- only Marsa Matruh, Port Said and Beni Sueif are excluded -- with candidates battling to fill 88 seats. An additional 44 members of the 264 seat council will be appointed by presidential decree. The NDP's central bureau, headed by secretary- general and Shura Council Speaker Safwat El-Sherif, meets next week to fix the criteria to be used in selecting the party's candidates. The meeting is expected to recommend the forming of electoral colleges which will allow party members to choose among election hopefuls though NDP insiders tell the Weekly that those who proved capable of rallying support for constitutional amendments in last month's referendum are likely to top the list of the party's official candidates. A number of businessmen are also seeking nomination in return for generous donations to the party. The Shura Council, meanwhile, has several contentious items on its agenda before it adjourns on 24 April. Yesterday it began debating a controversial bill aimed at establishing an appeals procedure for suspects tried before military courts. Currently only the president can overturn military court rulings. The proposed Supreme Military Appeals Court (SMAC), according to a Shura Council Legislative Committee report, will be located in Cairo and "comprise a board of five military judges, headed by the chairman of the Military Justice Authority". The court's main job will be to "decide on appeals filed by the military prosecution or by military and civilian personnel found guilty by military courts". The SMAC bill has provoked mixed reactions. Chairman of the Shura Council's Legislative Committee Abdel-Rehim Nafie insists it is "a very civilised step" since it provides guarantees for those referred to military courts. "In setting up the SMAC President Mubarak intends to place military courts on an equal footing with civilian courts in terms of appeal rights." Opposition and civil society figures are less sanguine over the proposed changes. Political analyst Fahmi Howeidi sees the new bill as symptomatic of the desire to "increase the number of civilians referred to military courts". Howeidi told the Weekly that adding "guarantees and the right to appeal against military court rulings is like mixing honey with poison". "The real intention, after recent amendments provided Mubarak with a constitutional license to refer more civilians to military courts, is to bring the NDP's political opponents before these tribunals." Military courts have been widely used to prosecute Brotherhood members. In February President Mubarak referred 40 senior Brotherhood officials, including the group's third-in-command Khairat El-Shater, to military tribunals on charges ranging from money laundering to supporting terrorism. The Shura Council's pre-recess agenda also includes discussions of amendments to the 1956 law on the exercise of political rights. Minister of State for Parliamentary and Legal Affairs Moufid Shehab has disclosed that changes to the law will exclude both determining the system used in elections and the setting of a fixed quota of seats reserved for women candidates. "These issues will be dealt with by subsequent legislation allowing the present amendment to focus on detailing the mandate of the supreme committee that will be entrusted with monitoring parliamentary elections in accordance with changes to Article 88 of the constitution." It is anticipated that members of the committee will be appointed by President Mubarak in his capacity as chairman of the Higher Council of Judicial Authorities. The Shura Council is also expected to debate recent revelations in an Israeli documentary film that 250 unarmed Egyptian prisoners of war were murdered by Israeli troops during the 1967 June war. More than 20 Shura Council members have petitioned El-Sherif to call for a debate on the incident. The Shura Council members, led by Coptic businessman Nabil Louqa Bibawi, viewed the film Ruch Shaked (The Spirit of Shaked) -- produced by Israeli journalist Ran Edilist and screened last month on Israeli Television's First Channel -- two weeks ago, after a copy was provided by the Foreign Ministry. In his debate request Bibawi said that "if the Israeli war crimes are confirmed Egypt should ask for $10 billion in compensation and file a case with the international criminal court against Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, now Israel's minister of infrastructure and the then commander of the elite Shaked reconnaissance unit that killed the Egyptian prisoners of war."
