Arming for a stormy session

By Gamal Essam El-Din
Following the re-election of Fathi Sorour as speaker on 13 December, and an inaugural address by President Hosni Mubarak four days later, the People's Assembly will get down to business on 2 January, grappling with a host of controversial issues.
According to parliamentary rules, the People's Assembly should not begin playing its role as a monitor of the government's performance until the government delivers its policy statement, expected in the second half of January.
But independent and opposition deputies are already preparing to table as many as 150 questions and requests for information to cabinet ministers. They are mostly directed to Prime Minister Atef Ebeid and three members of his team: Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, Economy Minister Youssef Boutros Ghali and Agriculture Minister Youssef Wali. Ghali and Wali are also members of parliament.
The independent and opposition deputies are also targeting the regulations which govern parliament's performance. A request signed by more than 50 deputies has been submitted to Sorour asking for an amendment of the People's Assembly's internal statutes. The request was suggested by Murtada Mansour, an independent MP and prominent lawyer. Mansour announced that amending the assembly's regulations should be given priority in order to strengthen parliament's supervisory powers.
Mansour, 48, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the assembly's statutes date back to 1979 and had not been changed since. "This does not make sense, particularly since these regulations arm the assembly speaker with many powers at the expense of deputies," he said, citing regulations which give the speaker and the assembly's bureau the right to take special decisions on behalf of deputies. "Worse, the speaker is empowered by these regulations to prevent the assembly from debating certain issues or reports. These stipulations should be changed if we are keen to strengthen the assembly's supervisory role," Mansour said.
He added that out of 409 articles contained in the statutes, the request seeks to amend at least 61. "The proposed modifications focus on giving deputies greater powers in supervising the government's performance. Under the existing regulations, deputies are limited to tabling three questions per cabinet minister each month. The restrictions apply to other supervisory tools used by deputies such as requests for information and urgent statements. This means that the existing regulations are in favour of the government and at the expense of deputies," said Mansour.
In response to this request, Sorour, who was re-elected as speaker for the 11th consecutive year, announced that a special committee will be established to study the proposed amendments.
Last week, Mansour submitted to Moussa the new parliament's first request for information, asking the foreign minister to provide the assembly with statistics about the number of Egyptians who travelled to Israel and how many of them have Israeli wives. Citing the recent arrest in Cairo of an Egyptian man on suspicion of spying for Israel, Mansour demanded that Egyptian men married to Israeli women be stripped of nationality.
Known as an outspoken lawyer, Mansour also directed an interpellation -- a question that must be answered -- to Ebeid on corruption in public sector banks. "I have a list of businessmen who fled Egypt to avoid paying millions of pounds in unpaid loans. I have full information about the banking loopholes they used and the loans they fled with," Mansour said.
Requests for urgent statements are another tool used by deputies in the performance of their supervisory role. Several have been submitted ahead of the parliamentary session. The majority deal with Egyptian-Israeli relations. The most significant was submitted by businessman Emad El-Galada of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) who represents the Nile Delta governorate of Beheira. El-Galada demanded that the Jewish festival of Abu Hassira, held at the end of December in Beheira, be cancelled. "It is no longer acceptable to allow this festival to take place at a time when Israelis are killing dozens of Muslim and Christian Palestinians every day," El-Galada said.
As for interpellations, Wafdist MP and journalist Ayman Nour said he would challenge Economy Minister Ghali with certified information about corruption in the banking sector. Hamdein Sabahi, a Nasserist journalist and MP, targeted Agriculture Minister Wali with accusations related to normalising agricultural relations with Israel.
In the meantime, the assembly continues to feel the pinch of appeals questioning the legality of the membership of many of its deputies as a result of alleged irregularities in the recent parliamentary elections. Sorour has entrusted the assembly's Legislative and Constitutional Committee with examining a court ruling handed down two weeks ago by the Supreme Administrative Court against Mohamed Ahmed Saleh, an NDP deputy for Talkha district in the Daqahliya governorate. The court ruled that Saleh, a surgeon, had been given German nationality at the expense of losing his Egyptian citizenship. "As a result, Saleh has lost a basic prerequisite for contesting elections," the court said. Saleh is the first deputy to be described as non-Egyptian.
In other developments, the Supreme Administrative Court ordered last week that only four candidates should run in delayed elections in Alexandria's El-Raml district. These elections originally took place on 18 October with two candidates of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood garnering the highest number of votes and qualifying for run-off elections on 24 October against two NDP candidates. However, Interior Minister Habib El-Adli, citing a ruling by the Administrative Court, decided that the elections be cancelled and that new elections be held to include all 20 candidates vying in the competition. A date for the new elections remains to be set by El-Adli.
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A new and different parliament 21 - 27 December 2000
Independent needs 21 - 27 December 2000
Tiptoeing toward reform 21 - 27 December 2000
New parliament launched 14 - 20 December 2000
Taking the poll to the courts 30 Nov. - 6 Dec. 2000
See Elections 2000
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