By Gamal Essam El-Din The People's Assembly concluded its winter session last Thursday with the usual exchange of thanks between the House and the government and praise for their "fruitful cooperation in the people's service." Speaker Fathi Sorour commended the "constructive cooperation between the Assembly and the government within the framework of the democratic state founded by President Mubarak." Cabinet ministers, he said, had made themselves available to answer questions raised by MPs on a wide range of public issues. For his part, Prime Minister Kamal El-Ganzouri praised the Assembly's legislative and supervisory efforts. He said that a series of draft laws submitted by the government, and approved by the Assembly, in the past two weeks were designed to promote developmental projects and give the private sector a leading role in the national economy. But opposition and independent deputies were not happy. They took Sorour and the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) to task for debating at a "supersonic speed" and ramming through the House as many as 13 laws that will have profound effects for decades to come. Opposition deputies singled out for criticism a new law regulating the performance of the Central Auditing Agency (CAA). According to the legislation, the CAA will no longer be subject to the Assembly's jurisdiction, but will be placed under the supervision of the president. During a night debate on 9 June, opposition deputies expressed fear that the law would blunt the effectiveness of a major supervisory tool which was helpful to the Assembly in fighting financial corruption in government and the public sector. Leftist MP Raafat Seif said the law amounted to a declaration by the Assembly that it had willingly agreed to surrender to the government some of its most effective supervisory powers. Seif told Al-Ahram Weekly that the CAA had recently proved irksome to the government, especially following heated Assembly debates last month about alleged corruption and irresponsibility of managers of several public sector companies. He said that CAA reports had prompted opposition and independent deputies to demand the establishment of a fact-finding committee to scrutinise the privatisation programme, a request that was turned down by the NDP majority. Agreeing with Seif, Wafdist MP Fouad Badrawi questioned the wisdom of stripping the Assembly of its authority over the CAA. "Does the new law mean that the Assembly failed to make good use of the CAA's reports?" he asked. But Speaker Sorour was firm. "In the name of the People's Assembly, I approve the bill that places the CAA under the President's supervision," he said. "This does not negatively affect the supervisory role of the People's Assembly. It is quite inappropriate for the CAA to be under the Assembly's jurisdiction. Moreover, the CAA will be under the supervision of the President in his capacity as head of state and not as chief of the executive authority." Prime Minister Ganzouri explained that the new legislation does not mean that the CAA's reports will no longer be submitted to the Assembly. "The Assembly still has the right of debating these reports," he said. Mustafa El-Said, a former economy minister, told the Weekly that the new law was inevitable because, sooner or later, all public assets will be privatised. Parliamentary observers also noted that the number of interpellations (questions from MPs that must be answered by government ministers) had declined to an all-time low. There were only three interpellations during the entire session, and none of them produced a clear answer. Sorour said the Assembly had passed 176 laws, compared to 163 in last year's session. Of these, 122 dealt with financial and budgetary matters, 35 were economic reform laws, while 19 dealt with social and political questions. Oppositon figures, however, argued that while the Assembly passed an unprecedented number of laws to liberalise the economy, it also approved some "politically restrictive" legislation. Badrawi told the Weekly that the government had started submitting such laws some years ago, although the practice had gained momentum in the last two years. These laws, he said, aim at concentrating powers in the hands of top government officials, at the expense of other authorities. The opposition MP cited the law placing the CAA under the president's supervision, another law that attached the Suez Canal Authority to the cabinet, a legislation that made the publication of new newspapers conditional on the cabinet's approval and a law that made promotion to the rank of police brigadier-general conditional on selection and not on seniority. But Ahmed Abu Zeid, the NDP majority leader, rejected the claim that these laws were politically restrictive. "These laws aim at instilling discipline in certain sectors," he said. For example, the law on the publication of new newspapers was necessary after Egypt was swamped by a burgeoning market of "yellow" newspapers, Abu Zeid added. Observers also noted that in the just-concluded session the Assembly had approved a record number of laws that give foreigners unlimited access to such strategic sectors as telecommunications, electricity, maritime transport, banking and insurance. "While the Assembly said 'yes' to these 'foreigners' laws,' it said 'no' to many draft laws submitted by MPs addressing major concerns such as regulating the relationship between workers and employers and fighting monopolistic practices in the local market," said Ayman Nour, another Wafdist MP. But Abu Zeid argued that such draft laws need careful study. He said the Assembly's housing and proposals committees will begin a series of meetings by the end of this month on a new law aimed at liberalising rents of old residential units. Nour also noted that those few pieces of draft legislation submitted by MPs that gained the Assembly's approval came from businessmen. These include a bill that was submitted by Mohamed Abul-Einein, an appointed MP and prominent businessman, on raising the value of state prizes for outstanding achievement in literature and the arts. Another bill, submitted by Tarek El-Guindi, an NDP MP from the Nile Delta province of Sharqiya, established a federation for poultry producers and exporters.
