In spite of strong domestic and foreign objections, the People's Assembly quickly approved a controversial legislative amendment postponing municipal elections for two years. Gamal Essam El-Din reports On Tuesday the People's Assembly moved quickly to pass a government- driven amendment of a 1979 law regulating the performance of local councils. The amendment to Article 89 will extend the mandate of the current four-year-old municipal councils for another two years. The mandate was due to expire on 15 April, after which new local council elections would have been held. The amendment was approved less than 24 hours after being submitted to the People's Assembly. Earlier in the week, the upper consultative Shura Council also approved the controversial amendment. Domestic and foreign forces condemned the move, with the banned Muslim Brotherhood taking the lead. The group said the amendment was primarily aimed at stemming the tide of their political gains, which peaked late last year when parliamentary elections ended with the Brotherhood winning an unprecedented 88 seats, thereby becoming the assembly's main opposition force. The United States also expressed its displeasure with the delay, saying on Tuesday that as a matter of principle it does not favour postponing elections. During Tuesday's parliamentary debate, the government clashed with Brotherhood and leftist deputies over the delay's potential impact on political life. In total, 106 opposition MPs voted against the amendment -- the strongest opposition to a law in recent years. Parliamentary and Legal Affairs Minister Moufid Shehab tried to explain the reasoning behind the delay. He pointed out that last year's amendment of Article 76 of the constitution mandated that potential presidential candidates needed the support of 250 People's Assembly, Shura Council and local council representatives. "140 of these should come from local councils," he said. At the same time, President Hosni Mubarak's election campaign programme called for a democratisation of the councils themselves. "To meet these objectives," Shehab said, " both the constitution and the law must be amended," a process that would take at least two years time. The goal would be to decentralise the performance of local councils and provide them with greater supervisory powers. There are a staggering 49,820 local council seats. Shehab also said the decision had to do with the fact that mid-term Shura Council elections will be held next May. "It is not politically and financially viable for two kinds of elections to be held in such a short of period of time." Unimpressed by Shehab's arguments, Muslim Brotherhood MPs accused the government and the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) of ramming the amendment through parliament "to prevent the Brotherhood's candidates from running in local council elections". Hussein Ibrahim, a Brotherhood MP from Alexandria, said democratising the performance of local councils has never been on the government's agenda. "In 2002, the government rammed a law through parliament limiting judicial supervision in municipal elections to main polling stations." The result, Ibrahim said, was an NDP monopoly over about 99 per cent of the seats. "This turned the local councils into hotbeds of corruption, because members of executive local councils also became members of popular councils, which are supposed to act as executive local council watchdogs." Nasserist MP Mostafa Bakri said, "passing this amendment at this particular time will be seen by domestic and foreign forces as a setback to democracy. The amendment reveals just how weak the NDP has become; it is unable to face competitive elections, especially after clinching just 31 per cent of the seats in last year's parliamentary elections -- even with the help of security forces." Bakri and Brotherhood MPs proposed that the municipal council elections be postponed for just six months, but their proposals were rejected.
