Parliament has a lot of thorny issues to figure out next week, reports Gamal Essam El-Din Following a 7 November procedural session, parliament will plunge into actual business next Saturday. On top of the debate agenda is a report on Egypt's failure to obtain a single vote in support of its bid to host the 2010 soccer World Cup. The report, which was prepared by the Central Auditing Agency (CAA), looks into former Youth and Sports Minister Alieddin Hilal's breakdown of how the budget allocated for the bid was spent. The report charged that the bid's budget was rife with a series of financial irregularities that have to be answered and refuted by Hilal, who is also a heavyweight member of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). Another parliamentary investigation into the bid fiasco, which involved questioning a large number of officials regarding the bid file, will also be discussed. Extensive debates on the Youth Ministry's new strategy for raising the global competitiveness of Egyptian football teams will also take place. Soccer will also be the focus of a question directed to Youth Minister Anas El-Fiqi by leading NDP member of parliament Zakaria Azmi (who is also chief of presidential staff) about why the Youth Ministry gave Marco Tardelli, the former Italian coach of Egypt's national football team, a hefty salary of $46,000 per month even though his performance was so poor that Egypt was unable to qualify for the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany. In his address to the People's Assembly last Thursday President Hosni Mubarak suggested setting up a national sports council to act as an independent authority charged with raising Egypt's standard in sports, and especially football. Parliamentary committees are also scheduled to discuss other controversial issues next week. At the Housing Committee, headed by businessman MP Mohamed Abul-Enein, debates will be held on a CAA report that caused a bitter clash between the opposition and the CAA two weeks ago over the proliferation of monopolies in the steel market. Abul-Ezz El- Hariri, a leftist firebrand, charged that the CAA's report refrained from taking steel magnate Ahmed Ezz -- chairman of parliament's Budget and Planning Committee and a leading NDP member -- to task for monopolising the industry and rising prices, mainly because of Ezz's major political connections and high- ranking position in the ruling party. All of the above, however, is just the tip of an iceberg of issues parliament will face in the coming weeks, many of which will put its watchdog role to a serious test. Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif and his cabinet will be the main target of questions and interpellations submitted by opposition and independent MPs covering issues such as the spiral hikes in electricity and potable water rates, as well as civil servant salaries being too low to meet their basic needs. On the other hand, Prime Minister Nazif recently announced that his government would submit a wide-ranging batch of 14 bills dealing with political and economic reforms to the assembly. This reform agenda, which is the brainchild of the NDP's influential Policies Committee headed by President Mubarak's son Gamal, aims to provide sweeping income tax exemptions and lower customs on imported goods. Addressing the consultative Shura Council on 7 November, Nazif said the tax and customs bills would lead to a substantial increase in citizens' incomes, especially those within limited-income brackets. The Nazif government's agenda also includes political reform bills that deal with political parties, the exercise of political rights, the People's Assembly, and professional syndicates. President Mubarak told the assembly on 11 November that these political reform bills are aimed at encouraging more public participation in political life. The opposition, however, warned that the assembly's session was too short (seven months at best) to discuss these bills carefully and objectively. "The thing we know about this assembly is that when it acts swiftly, it acts unwisely," said leftist Tagammu Party Secretary- General Hussein Abdel-Razeq. A seven-month session, he said, was not long enough to discuss 14 bills related to critical political and economic matters, and allow parliament to exercise effective supervision of the government via questions and interpellations at the same time.
