Gamal Essam El-Din assesses the response to the Shura Council's approval, in principle, to the 34 constitutional amendments requested by President Mubarak The Shura Council is today expected to provisionally approve President Hosni Mubarak's 26 December initiative to amend 34 articles of the constitution following a three-day debate in which representatives of seven political parties have said they support the constitutional amendments in principle . The proposed amendments are regarded as holding the potential to change Egypt's political future. New articles introducing restrictions on Presidential prerogatives have been hailed as positive steps in the direction of democratic reform. But members of the opposition see some of the proposed articles as actually further restricting democratic practice. Members of the outlawed Moslem Brotherhood have been particularly vocal in rejecting the amendments deemed as, de facto, ending their ascendancy in the political domain. Ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) members of the council, on the other hand, have heaped praise on the proposed changes, calling them an historic initiative deserving of full support. A 28-page report by the Council's Legislative Affairs Committee said the amendments reflected the strength of Mubarak's commitment to political and constitutional reform. A second report, by the People's Assembly's General Committee, asserted that in their scope the changes Mubarak has called for represent the greatest constitutional leap forward for more than a quarter of a century. "These amendments are a giant step towards modernising Egypt and ushering the country into a new age of reform," said the report. The Assembly will begin its own three-day debate to discuss the amendments in principle on Tuesday. As in the Shura Council, Mubarak's proposals are expected to win overwhelming support in the People's Assembly. "What we saw in the Shura Council, and what we are going to see in the People's Assembly next week, is little more than a process of rubber-stamping," says Al-Ahram political analyst Mohamed El-Sayed Said. "But," he adds, "as long as the approval is restricted to principles then there is the hope that in the next stage, or when the final draft of amendments comes up for debate, a more in-depth discussion of the amendments will ensue." The spokesmen of the liberal Wafd and the leftist Tagammu in both the Shura Council and the People's Assembly have said they reserve the right to object to amendments when the final drafts are debated article by article. Both the Council and Assembly reports suggest that candidates from political parties in the next two presidential elections, scheduled for 2011 and 2017, will be exempted from meeting fixed conditions. The reports have also proposed a joint committee be established, tasked with settling differences that might arise from the discussion of the amendments in the two houses. Parliamentary Speaker Fathi Sorour told Al-Ahram Weekly that once the amendments are approved in principle next week, the legislative committees of both houses will begin a series of hearing sessions. "They are expected to last from the last week of January, or the first week of February, until the beginning of March, with civil society activists, journalists and constitutional law professors all being invited to give opinions and make proposals," said Sorour. It is during this stage, Sorour added, that MPs will be allowed to submit changes to the proposed drafts of the 34 amendments, though should they wish to extend their proposals to include articles other than the 34 the president has asked be changed they will have to gain the approval of two- thirds of MPs. The second stage will see the suggestions of the hearing sessions and MPs' proposed drafts presented in a single report to the Assembly's Legislative Committee. "It is this committee that will be charged with formulating the final draft of the 34 proposed amendments," says Sorour, who expects the Assembly to vote on the final drafts of Mubarak's amendments by the last week of March so that they can be put before the public in a referendum sometime in the first two weeks of April. Following the referendum, Surour revealed, the Assembly and Council will be engaged in changing eight laws so that they are in line with the new constitutional amendments. They will include legislation governing the exercise of political rights, regulating the performance of the People's Assembly, the Shura Council, the judiciary and local councils. While "the ethics court" law will be repealed, two new laws dealing with anti-terrorism and a new electoral system will be drafted, said Surour. The year-old presidential elections law will also be re-drafted and then referred to the Constitutional Court for final revision. This week's debate was dominated by the issue of full judicial supervision of elections. Criticisms of the current system were led by NDP legal experts, and senior officials. Mohamed Abdel-Rehim Nafie, chairman of the Shura Council's legislative committee, said the heavy involvement of judges in supervising elections came at the expense of their settling judicial disputes in courts, while NDP spokesman Mohamed Ragab argued the increasing number of registered voters, which grew by 12 million from 1999 to 2006, necessitated a far greater number of polling stations and there were too few judges to supervise them. "Mubarak's amendments give us hope that a new system of judicial supervision can be devised to meet new circumstances," said Ragab. Sorour has already made public recommendations that a number of auxiliary polling stations might be grouped into one main polling station which "could then be supervised by a single judge which would make it possible to organise elections in one day". At the same time, Sorour added, an independent higher election committee will be formed to supervise elections from A to Z. "In forming this committee, we will draw on the experience of countries like India, South Africa and in Western Europe." Mubarak's decision to curtail judicial supervision was criticised by several independent constitutional law professors. Tharwat Badawi, of Cairo University, said full judicial supervision had reduced vote-rigging by an estimated 25 per cent. "Eliminating full supervision will see a rise in fraudulent counts," says Badawi, who also predicts that following the approval of the amendments by referendum a decision will be made dissolving parliament. "It is a necessary step to secure the main objective of amendments, which is to rid parliament and political life of the Muslim Brotherhood," argues Badawi. In an attempt to widen their campaign against the amendments the Muslim Brotherhood has planned a conference next week at the Bar Association. Hamdi Hassan, the Brotherhood's parliamentary spokesman, told Al-Ahram Weekly that more than 200 Brotherhood members have been arrested since early January. "It is all part of a security campaign to prevent us from mobilising against Mubarak's amendments," said Hassan. Joining forces with the Brotherhood, Kifaya is planning a number of demonstrations, starting on 18 January, the 20th anniversary of the 1977 bread riots, in a bid to force the regime to respond to the people's demands.
