By Gamal Essam El-Din Political and parliamentary observers were taken by surprise this week when a number of opposition and independent deputies lashed out at People's Assembly Speaker Fathi Sorour, some of them accusing him of deliberately undermining parliament's supervisory role in relation to the government's performance. The unprecedented open confrontation erupted when Sorour, in concert with Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal El-Shazli, decided to delay discussion of interpellations (questions that must be answered) submitted this session by opposition and independent deputies until next March. Worse, with the support of a majority of ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) deputies, the two officials decided that the Assembly would only discuss one interpellation a month. Opposition and independent deputies were further frustrated when El-Shazli and Sorour announced that four interpellations, out of a total of eight, would be discussed when the Assembly met on Sunday. According to El-Shazli, it makes sense for government ministers to discuss four interpellations at once, since all of them deal with similar subjects. "This means that only four interpellations will be left on the Assembly's schedule for this session. As of March, the Assembly will still have four months to discuss the remaining four interpellations, at a rate of one a month. I think the opposition has no right to complain. All the interpellations are sure to be discussed in due course," said El-Shazli. Opposition deputies, however, far from having no desire to complain, were infuriated by what they heard. They set about Sorour, some accusing him of collaborating with the government in sidelining the supervisory role of the Assembly. In his turn, Sorour responded by criticising the opposition. In his opinion, parliamentary interpellations are "a worthless means of supervision, as long as the opposition does not have the necessary quorum to put the government to a vote of confidence. (...) For that reason, parliamentary interpellations are nothing more than requests for information. The opposition in this Assembly is just not strong enough," Sorour asserted. Sorour then agreed to give the floor to certain opposition deputies. Ayman Nour and Ahmed Nasser, two members of the Wafd Party, argued that the new system of discussing interpellations means that parliament's supervisory role would be completely undermined for the current session. Nour, quoting figures to support his case, emphasised that the number of interpellations discussed in the People's Assembly as a percentage of those submitted has declined from one hundred per cent in the 1970s to only 43 per cent last year. "It is an alarming sign, because it means that the Assembly has almost given up its supervisory powers," said Nour. Joining forces with them, Sameh Ashour and El-Badri Farghali, two leftist members, accused the government of "insulting the Assembly" and "marginalising its supervisory role." Minister El-Shazli responded by emphasising that the government has a deep respect to the Assembly. "The government demonstrated this respect by accepting to answer four interpellations in a single meeting," El-Shazli said. Sorour compromised in order to calm down the enraged opposition deputies, who finally accepted that the first four interpellations be discussed in the course of two meetings instead of one. Sorour then announced that only half an hour would be devoted to the discussion of each interpellation. Before he could finish his sentence, pandemonium broke out again. Several opposition deputies began yelling that Sorour was deliberately undermining the Assembly's supervisory role and preventing it from revealing corruption in government circles. Ragab Hilal Hemeida, the sole representative of the Liberal Party, tried to urge his opposition colleagues to walk out in protest at Sorour's decision. Hemeida then turned on Sorour, shouting that he was "up to his neck in attempts to destroy the Assembly's role." Opposition deputies, however, subsequently managed to persuade Hemeida to return to the hall after Sorour had promised to give more time to each interpellation. On Sunday, the Assembly then proceeded to discuss three interpellations directed at Public Sector Minister Atef Ebeid. The discussion lasted for four and a half hours, running from one o'clock to twenty minutes before iftar. The three interpellations were submitted by two independent deputies, Mohamed Marzouq and Mahmoud Zeinhom, and by Liberal Party deputy Hemeida. In their interpellations, Marzouq and Zeinhom cited several cases of corruption in public sector companies. Marzouq took minister Ebeid to task for appointing inefficient and corrupt managers to senior posts in several public sector companies, in particular Kafr Al-Dawwar Spinning and Weaving Company. According to Marzouq, it was Ebeid's decisions that were mainly responsible for the deterioration of Egypt's giant textile sector. Zeinhom also held Minister Ebeid chiefly responsible for the high losses at Misr Tourism and Eastern Tobacco companies. Zeinhom went as far as to accuse Ebeid of selling 3.375 million shares of Al-Ahram Beverages Company (ABC) at an undervalued price. According to Zeinhom, Ebeid approved the sale of the company's shares at LE68.5 per share to an Egyptian-American businessman called Ahmed El-Zayyat, even though a rival Danish beer company had been ready to pay LE75. As for Hemeida, he charged Mohamed Ali Zein, chairman of the Holding Transport Company (HTC), with corruption and perverting the privatisation process for personal gain, the sums involved reaching millions of Egyptian pounds. For instance, said Hemeida, Zein had sold the Sonesta Hotel, which was owned by HTC, to businessman Mounir Ghabbour at an undervalued price of LE8 million. In Hemeida's view, Zein is only one of many corrupt managers appointed by Minister Ebeid. Ebeid denied all the charges directed against him. He asserted that corruption in the public sector is very limited (just six cases in six years), while net profits had grown from LE42 million in 1990 to LE2.388 billion last year. Also on Sunday, Abdel-Moneim El-Oleimi, an independent deputy for Tanta, addressed the last of the four interpellations to Health Minister Ismail Sallam. El-Oleim's interpellation concerned the lack of control over foodstuffs, with the result that many students are poisoned by eating substandard food. This week's confrontation in parliament revived the debate over the Assembly's supervisory role. Yehia El-Gamal, professor of constitutional law at Cairo University, was critical of Sorour's claim that parliamentary interpellations are worthless as long as the opposition does not have enough MPs to bring the government down. He told Al-Ahram Weekly that the interpellation is parliament's most powerful supervisory tool, regardless of whether the opposition is weak or strong. El-Gamal argued that the Assembly had long ago surrendered most of its powers to the government. "There is nothing new here. The government has long had a number of ways of keeping a tight grip on the Assembly. Ever since its inception in 1995, this parliament abandoned all its powers to the executive," El-Gamal said.
