The opposition and the government bickered in parliament this week over the integrity of elections, the worsening of economic conditions, and the expansion of monopolies. Gamal Essam El-Din reports A three-month clash between the opposition and the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) came to a crescendo this week. Involving draft-dodging deputies who resigned before being officially kicked out of the People's Assembly, and a subsequent legal quagmire over the by-elections held to fill their seats, the crisis may even, some say, threaten the assembly's integrity as a whole. On Saturday, the opposition, led by the liberal- oriented Wafd Party, warned that actually allowing those who won last month's by-elections to become MPs could end up invalidating the entire People's Assembly. "It is a total crime and a flagrant violation of the constitution, which states that refraining from implementing court rulings is a crime punishable by law," said Al-Wafd's parliamentary speaker Mounir Abdel-Nour. Abdel-Nour was referring to several court rulings -- thus far ignored by the government -- invalidating the by-elections. He demanded that those who won the 25 December by-elections be prevented from being sworn in as new MPs "until the Supreme Constitutional Court gives its final verdict regarding the legality of the 25 December by- elections". Claiming that the constitutional article alluded to by Abdel-Nour -- article 72 -- applied to civil servants and not the People's Assembly, parliamentary speaker Fathi Sorour and other NDP leaders managed to drum up support amongst a majority of NDP MPs to vote to allow the winning candidates to take the parliamentary oath. Abdel-Nour's attack came in light of a high- profile 7 January decision by President Hosni Mubarak to request a Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) interpretation of articles five and 12 of the law regulating the People's Assembly. The two articles deal with the ways and means of organising elections and by-elections. The president's request follows a situation where a number of Administrative Justice Courts (AJC) have differed over how these articles should be applied. While 13 AJCs declared the 25 December by- elections null and void because they had to be confined to those who ran in the original elections for the same seats in 2000, two AJCs (in Assiut and Alexandria) said the opposite. The crisis deepened when the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) sided with the 13 AJCs, arguing that the People's Assembly should have revoked the draft-dodging MPs' memberships instead of accepting their resignations "because the membership of these deputies had [by force of a Supreme Constitutional Court ruling] actually been made invalid since 2000". The SAC ruling also provided the opposition with ammunition to support its claim that the NDP had forced its draft- dodging MPs to resign. "Had they been stripped of their membership, the NDP would not have been allowed to field candidates," Al-Wafd newspaper said. The SCC -- the court that will now decide whether the 25 December by-elections had to be confined to those who ran in 2000 -- is the sole authority empowered with delivering correct interpretations of articles that are being disputed or involve conflict in terms of their application. Yehia El-Gammal, a Cairo University constitutional law professor, said Mubarak's decision to refer the matter to the Supreme Court is a blow for the NDP. "It's not a secret that NDP bigwigs made mistakes in their quest to ensure that the party won all the 25 December by-election seats. In spite of all their recent talk of reform, they have again shown that they are still fond of circumventing judicial rulings and toying with the constitutionality of parliament." El-Gammal said Mubarak took the decision to avoid the risk of parliament being dissolved. Other observers said Mubarak intervened because of the importance of certain political reform bills the existing assembly is entrusted with passing, including approving his 2005 nomination for a fifth term in office. On the other hand, Adel Eid, a prominent lawyer and an independent MP, said referring the matter to the SCC was wrong. "There was no need" for it, he said, "because the SAC's ruling is final and binding." A second clash also erupted in the assembly on Saturday. Worsening economic conditions inspired 15 opposition and independent deputies to direct 40 interpellations (questions that must be answered by cabinet ministers) to Prime Minister Atef Ebeid. The unprecedented number of interpellations deal with a variety of issues ranging from the disastrous impact of the floatation of the Egyptian pound, corruption in the banking sector, the proliferation of private monopolies, vote-rigging of elections, to the lack of harmony and teamwork in the cabinet. Somewhat surprisingly, Ebeid said he was ready to answer three of the interpellations at once. Responding to interpellations submitted by independent Ayman Nour, Wafdist Mohamed Dawoud and leftist El-Badri Farghali, Ebeid said poverty is an international phenomenon, "which applies to all, including even the United States, where the poverty rate is close to 15 per cent of the total population". In Egypt, Ebeid said, the poverty rate fell from 60 per cent in the 1950s to its current rate of 20 per cent. The prime minister argued that his government had managed -- over the past two years -- to achieve economic growth rates higher than those achieved by China or India. "My government has been able to provide 35 million Egyptians with more than 270 million subsidised loaves of bread per day, along with a large and diversified range of services," Ebeid said. He tempered his optimism, however, with the argument that Egypt would never be able to achieve self-sufficiency in fields as essential as wheat production because the population is growing at an explosive pace. While Ebeid said global inflation had played a major role in the surge of local prices, MP Nour blamed Ebeid's policies. Nour claimed that poverty had even forced 22,000 citizens to commit suicide last year. "While some people burned themselves, others opted to eat poison," said the MP, who also enhanced his presentation with photos. Nour asked Ebeid to resign in order "to save Egypt from a new wave of deterioration and failures". MP Dawoud accused Ebeid's government of massive corruption. "This is a criminal government because it exposed poor Egyptians to huge amounts of substandard food imports." MP El-Badri said Ebeid's decision to float the Egyptian pound had been taken based on orders from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United States, and at the expense of the majority of poor Egyptians. On Sunday, the opposition also accused Ebeid of ignoring the spread of private sector monopolies, especially in the steel production and mobile phone service sectors. Opposition MPs charged that monopolisers -- who allegedly include business tycoons such as NDP heavyweight MP Ahmed Ezz -- had been allowed to raise their prices to alarming levels and thus gain hefty profits in record time. Bowing to the opposition's pressure, Ebeid approved that a parliamentary fact-finding committee be formed to examine the monopolistic practices allegedly pursued by steel producers and the two cellular phone service providers.
