Parliament extends President Mubarak's authority to conclude military purchases in secret despite objections from opposition MPs, reports Gamal Essam El-Din The People's Assembly decided on Monday to give President Hosni Mubarak unrestricted powers to make financial allocations for armaments and other military purchases for the next three fiscal years. The decision means that Mubarak is authorised to conclude military purchases from foreign countries without making them public or informing the People's Assembly. The president of the republic was first given the mandate in 1972 and it has been renewed periodically since then. The assembly approved the latest extension by a majority of 313, thereby allowing Mubarak to "ratify agreements on military purchases and sales, and issue law-decrees concerning armament allocations and other allocations for the armed forces... until the end of fiscal year 2011/2012". The objecting deputies, mainly leftist and Muslim Brotherhood affiliates, complained that the extension was unconstitutional because it undermined the authority of the People's Assembly to supervise arms agreements. Besides, said Wafdist MP Mohamed Sherdi, no extension was warranted given the kind of blanket secrecy it seeks to impose is no longer possible in today's world. "With access to the Internet anyone can gather details of the arms purchases of almost any country," he argued. Sherdi also wondered "why secrecy had to be maintained once the US had become the main supplier of weapons to both Egypt and Israel". "The world's largest military supplier, the United States, now reveals military deals in Congress as do most other countries... By the same token we hope that parliament in Egypt will get adequate information about its own country's military deals." Opposition and independent MPs stressed that their objection should not be misconstrued as an objection to Mubarak in person. "We fully respect Mubarak and the right of armed forces to acquire the most sophisticated weapons. We are objecting to a principle rather than to a person," concluded Sherdi. Speaking for the government, Moufid Shehab, minister of state for legal and parliamentary affairs, said the extension was necessary in order to keep the armed forces strong in times of peace as well as war. He argued that secrecy was essential to successfully concluding military purchases and noted that the extension of the law comes at a time when the region appears prey to many military confrontations. "Yesterday there was fighting in the nearby Gaza Strip and earlier there were hostilities in Iraq, Lebanon and southern Sudan," he said. The majority of National Democratic Party (NDP) deputies rallied behind the extension, focussing the debate on the dangers posed to national security by Israel's new right-wing, extremist government. Zakaria Azmi, NDP heavyweight and chief of presidential staff, said "the fact that Avigdor Lieberman, who wants to demolish the High Dam and occupy Sinai, is about to become the foreign minister of Israel is a reason good enough to pass the extension". Azmi also argued that the extension was constitutional on the grounds that it gave the People's Assembly the absolute right to vote yes or no. Ahmed Ezz, the NDP's steel-magnate chairman of the assembly's Budget Committee, defended the extension by pointing out that secrecy was an important part of armament deals everywhere. "As you all know," said Ezz, "despite massive efforts America's Central Intelligence Agency has been unable to gain information about the armament programmes of several countries." "The national security of Egypt is a red line. We can maintain it only by guaranteeing the secrecy of armament deals," he ended. Taher Huzzayin, an independent MP since resigning from the NDP, insisted that though law was necessary before the 1973 October War when military purchases had to be kept a closely guarded secret since the country was preparing for war, it had no justification today. Muslim Brotherhood MP Ahmed Abu Baraka strongly criticised the extension but said his objection did not mean that he questioned the integrity of Mubarak he pointed out that Article 108 of the constitution states that the president is vested with this authority only in exceptional cases. Saad Abboud, an independent MP with leftist leanings, argued that the recent armed confrontation between the Palestinians and the Israelis in Gaza had nothing to do with Egypt and should not be cited to justify the extension. "We refused to join the Palestinians in their fight against the Israelis or accept any military role in Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq. There are, then, no exceptional circumstances to approve the extension." Shehab responded by saying "the Internet can never be a reliable source for gaining information about any country's armament programmes". "Let me ask a simple question: what is the job of intelligence agencies if it is easy to get information about armament programmes from the Internet?" Some independent MPs joined forces with the NDP. Mustafa Bakri, a Nasserist MP, pointed out that the Jewish state had sent an Israeli citizen to jail because he made its nuclear arsenal public. Kamal Ahmed, another Nasserist MP, argued that "peace with Israel should be comprehensive and based on justice". "This peace, though, has become like a truce during which we should arm ourselves with the latest military technology in secret."
