The consultative upper house holds a procedural meeting today to elect its chairman, his two deputies and the heads of 12 committees, Gamal Essam El-Din reports Newly appointed and elected members of the Shura Council -- 133 in total -- are due to be sworn in today. The ceremony will take place at a procedural meeting in which the council will also elect a chairman, two deputies, and the heads of 12 committees. Safwat El-Sherif, secretary-general of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) and an appointed member of the council since 2004, is expected to be re-elected as chairman for the third time. The chair of the Shura Council is also de facto head of the Political Parties Committee and the Higher Press Council. El-Sherif's two deputies, Abdel-Rehim Nafei and Ahmed El-Ammawi, are also expected to retain their posts. NDP members will also dominate the council's 12 committees. In his capacity as NDP chairman, President Hosni Mubarak met with the party's Shura Council members yesterday. El-Sherif said Mubarak's meeting with NDP members "signals a new stage in the history of the NDP and reflects the close relationship between the party's leader and members". El-Sherif defended the NDP's performance in the Shura Council mid-term elections, held on 1 and 8 June, in which the party secured 80 of the 88 seats contested. "All I can say about the elections is that the NDP emerged victorious. It is still the party that enjoys the confidence of the vast majority of Egyptians," said El-Sherif. The outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, whose 14 candidates, running as independents, failed to win a single seat has accused the NDP and security forces of rigging the election and manipulating the results. On Tuesday Mubarak issued a presidential decree appointing 45 members to the Shura Council. Under the constitution the president can appoint a third of council members. Mustafa El-Feki, the president's former secretary for information and currently chairman of the People's Assembly's Foreign Affairs Committee, was the biggest surprise on the list of appointees. El-Feki will fill the seat left vacant by the death of Yunan Labib Rizq, the distinguished historian. The appointment of El-Feki came a day after he was awarded the 2010 State Prize for Merit in Sociological Studies. It is the first time that a sitting, elected member of the People's Assembly has been appointed to the Shura Council. The appointment means El-Feki, deputy for Damanhour, the capital city of the Nile-Delta governorate of Beheira, will not be standing in October's People's Assembly elections. He won the Damanhour seat in 2005, beating Brotherhood candidate Gamal Heshmat in what was one of the most controversial battles of the election. Noha El-Zeini, a judge charged with supervising the poll, testified before a judicial hearing committee that El-Feki had won because the vote had been rigged. An NDP insider told Al-Ahram Weekly that, "the appointment of El-Feki aims to spare the party embarrassment when it comes to selecting its candidate for the seat in next October's elections." El-Feki's appointment has led to speculation that he might be elected chairman of the Shura Council's Foreign and Arab Relations Committee. Other contenders include Mohamed Bassiouni, Egypt's former ambassador to Israel, and Mohamed Abdallah, elected NDP member for Alexandria and a former chairman of the People's Assembly's Foreign Affairs Committee. Ahmed Hassan, secretary-general of the Arab Nasserist Party, and Bahaaeddin Abu Shoqa, a member of the liberal-oriented Wafd Party's Higher Council, were also appointed. It is the first time a member of the Nasserist Party has been appointed to the Shura Council since it was founded in 1980. Hassan joins Mohsen Attia, the Nasserist Party member elected in the Cairo district of Azbakiya. Abu Shoqa is the lawyer defending Hisham Talaat Mustafa, the NDP business tycoon and a former Shura Council appointee facing trial on murder charges. He joins fellow Wafdist Mohamed Sarhan, a businessman from Port Said, on the council. Abdel-Rahman Kheir, a leading member of the leftist Tagammu Party, who was elected a member of the Shura Council in 2004, declined to run in this month's polls, a sign that he was aware he too would be included on the list of appointees. The council currently includes four Tagammu Party members, two Nasserists and three Wafdists, alongside five members of smaller parties. The 264-member council includes 14 non-NDP members and 250 NDP deputies. Osama El-Ghazali Harb, a journalist and chairman of the liberal-oriented Democratic Front, announced three weeks ago that he was not interested in retaining his seat on the council, preferring to devote his time to coordinating with Mohamed El-Baradei on his campaign for political reform. The list of appointees includes 11 new faces, most of them NDP members. The most prominent are Engineer Ibrahim Mahlab, chairman of the state-owned Arab Contractors Company, Amr Ezzat Salama, a former minister of higher education, lawyer Sami El-Sayed Mustafa Abdel-Aziz and economist Alya Al-Mahdi. Eight Copts were appointed, and two women. Mamdouh El-Beltagui, a former minister of tourism, Mohamed Zaki Abu Amer, a former minister for legal and parliamentary affairs, Magui El-Halawani, the dean of Cairo University's Faculty of Mass Communication and Khallaf Abdel-Gaber Khallaf, the former head of the council's Economic and Fiscal Affairs Committee, failed to retain their seats. The selection of appointees, says Al-Ahram political analyst Amr Elshobaki, was politically motivated. "The number of non-NDP party-based members increased from seven to 14, giving most leading opposition parties a chance to field candidates in next year's presidential elections," said Elshobaki. "Increasing the representation of opposition parties is an attempt to court the opposition rather than lose them to ex-IAEA chief El-Baradei."
