Several cabinet ministers will soon be facing the wrath of opposition MPs. But, as Gamal Essam El-Din reports, the parliamentary opposition remains both divided and disheartened Prime Minister Atef Ebeid and three members of his cabinet -- Housing Minister Ibrahim Suleiman, Public Sector Minister Mokhtar Khattab and Agriculture Minister Youssef Wali -- look to be the main targets of interpellations (questions that must be answered) submitted by opposition and independent MPs this parliamentary session. The MPs plan to table as many interpellations as possible; 13 have been submitted thus far, with that number bound to increase after Ebeid delivers his annual policy statement in the second half of December. The most vocal of the government's detractors is, as usual, El- Badri Farghali, the maverick leftist MP from Port Said. Farghali is pursuing three interpellations this session. The first one is directed at Housing Minister Suleiman. Farghali's interpellation claims that the Suleiman's Housing Ministry awards contracts to private engineering consultancy offices with whom he has ties, and that "one of these [offices] is owned by Diaa El-Mouniri, who is Suleiman's brother-in-law". According to Farghali, El- Mouniri's office -- the EnviroCivic Consultancies -- has been monopolising the implementation of the Housing Ministry's construction projects for years, to the tune of LE8 billion. "The office has no distinction," alleges Farghali, "other than the fact that the owner is Suleiman's relative." Farghali also has a problem with Suleiman's alleged acquisition of five "palaces" worth LE5 million in some of Cairo's most luxurious districts. "One of these palaces," Farghali claims, "originally belonged to Mahmoud Fahmi El-Noqrashi, who was Egypt's prime minister in 1946." According to Farghali, Suleiman violated the military decree protecting the building -- which was registered as an antiquity -- from demolition. Interviewed by the television talk show A very candid dialogue last week, Suleiman insisted that he was not so "naive" as to award his brother-in-law the lion's share of the ministries construction projects. "These projects were awarded in compliance with government bidding regulations," the minister said. As for his private investments, Suleiman argued that he has the right to acquire as many villas -- "not palaces" -- as he wants, adding in jest that if he couldn't solve his own "housing problem, then [he certainly] wouldn't be capable of solving Egypt's housing problem". Suleiman also said that he had consistently managed -- over the years -- to refute the same sorts of accusations being levelled against him now by Farghali. The housing minister is also facing another interpellation, this one proffered by Kamal Ahmed, an independent MP with Nasserist leanings. Ahmed alleged that Suleiman's housing policies are tilted in favour of the wealthy. Other interpellations, mostly originating with leftist MPs, deal with corruption in the banking sector. An interpellation by Abul-Ezz El-Hariri, who like Farghali is a deputy for the left- wing Tagammu Party, offers a list of 45 businessmen who allegedly obtained nearly LE40 billion in bank loans without offering adequate collateral. "Eight of these businessmen were easily provided with LE12.8 billion in loans (averaging LE1.6 billion each), while 37 others obtained LE25 billion," said El-Hariri. His interpellation, directed at Prime Minister Ebeid, claims that, for years, bank loan policies depended less on a businessman's credit worthiness than on personal ties to government and NDP officials, and even bribery. "As a result," El-Hariri said, "Egypt's banks ended up lending billions of Egyptian pounds to unscrupulous businessmen running unsound enterprises that soon defaulted, thus negatively affecting Egypt's credit rating." El-Hariri's list of indebted businessmen includes prominent MPs such as Ahmed Ezz, who is the chairman of Parliament's Plan and Budget Committee. While the volume and substance of the interpellations may give the impression of an active opposition bloc, opposition MPs have actually found themselves under the gun ever since a 13 November parliamentary procedural meeting took place. A number of press commentators are arguing that the opposition's decision to support the reelection of Fathi Sorour as parliament speaker for the 13th consecutive year underlines that opposition and independent MPs have scrapped the idea of joining forces to forge a unified front against the government and the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). Mohamed Abdel-Alim, an MP for the liberal Wafd Party, acknowledges that "parliament is caught in a vicious cycle". He told the Weekly that "there is a general sense of hopelessness and frustration amongst MPs from every party," and that opposition and independent MPs in particular think that "the combination of a government with an enormous majority and a prime minister who circumvents the People's Assembly whenever possible has rendered parliament less relevant than ever before." Abdel-Alim cited the NDP- dominated parliament's chronic tendency to prevent opposition and independent MPs from directing confrontational interpellations to cabinet ministers. "In the previous session, more than 20 interpellations were submitted, but only nine were actually discussed," Abdel-Alim said. Most of the dodged interpellations, he said, were actually the most important "because they aimed to expose corruption in strategic sectors like the battered banking system". This session may be different. Amongst the political interpellations on the table is the one submitted by Mohamed El- Badrashini, an independent, left- leaning MP who wants Prime Minister Ebeid to address the issue of compensation for Egyptian POWs murdered by the Israeli army. El-Badrashini argues that documents corroborating facts regarding Israeli generals (most prominent of whom is current Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon) ordering the execution of Egyptian POWs in the 1956 and 1967 wars are widely available. And yet, El-Badrashini says, "the government has ignored the idea of making use of these documents to initiate legal proceedings against Israeli leaders so that the families of the POWS who were executed can be compensated." The fact that even members of the NDP have decided to submit stinging interpellations this session may also be a sign of change. Abdel-Fatah El-Badri, an NDP deputy from the Delta governorate of Kafr Al-Sheikh, has directed a question to Minister of Agriculture and NDP Deputy Chairman for Internal Affairs Youssef Wali. During parliament's previous session El-Badri asked Wali why he had allowed the Ministry of Agriculture to be controlled by a handful of his associates. "Youssef Abdel- Rahman, the ex-chairman of the Principal Bank for Development and Agricultural Credit (PBDAC) who is currently facing trial on corruption charges, was at the top of that list," El-Badri said. At the time, Kamal El- Shazli, the NDP's parliamentary whip, rebuked El-Badri for asking Wali (who was the NDP secretary-general at the time) such a "rude" question. According to El-Shazli, Wali's policy was to appoint highly qualified people to these top positions. This week, upon submitting his interpellation, El-Badri claims that some 42 NDP deputies have joined him in directing the same questions to Wali regarding the Ministry's top ranking officials.
