The new parliamentary session began last week, with independent and opposition MPs voicing their usual complaints that the ruling NDP insists on monopolising posts and marginalising their roles, Gamal Essam El-Din reports Opposition and independent MPs opted to boycott the People's Assembly internal elections held on 12 November. In a written statement they explained the boycott was in response to what they charged were undemocratic practices. "Senior NDP officials insist on monopolising parliamentary posts when opposition and independent MPs occupy 25 per cent of assembly seats," claimed the statement, which went on to complain that parliament's general committee was selected through a secret ballot. They also demanded that independent MPs on the general committee be chosen through election not selection. As a result of the boycott, Fathi Sorour was re-elected as speaker winning all 315 of the votes cast. Independent and opposition MPs, however, agreed with deputies of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) that the new parliamentary session should be dominated by assessing the impact of the global financial crisis on Egypt as well as reviewing investigations into the series of disasters that have so alarmed the public last summer. For his part, Moufid Shehab, minister of state for legal and parliamentary affairs, stressed the government's legislative agenda, which includes amending the 1929's law regulating personal status issues, enhancing the role of women in political and parliamentary life by reforming the election law, revamping the regulations governing professional syndicates and allowing greater powers to be devolved to local councils. NDP spokesman Abdel-Ahad Gamaleddin said the ruling party's MPs will be mobilised in the new session to ensure that the ambitious legislative agenda is passed. It is a prospect, however, that dismays Mahmoud Abaza, leader of the liberal Wafd Party, who accuses the government of attempting to ram legislation through parliament and curtail any serious discussion of any laws. "There was a lot of haste in discussing a new legislation at the end of the last session. It is a scenario we hoped would not be repeated," said Abaza. President Hosni Mubarak is due next Monday to deliver a keynote speech before a joint parliamentary session including the People's Assembly and Shura Council. Mubarak's speech is expected to focus on the international financial crisis and ask parliament to cooperate with the government for softening negative effects. Meanwhile, the group of 86, the bloc of 86 Islamist MPs acting under the umbrella of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, plan to flex their muscles in the new parliamentary session. No sooner had the new parliamentary session opened on 12 November than they began submitting interpellations -- questions that must be answered by cabinet ministers -- critical of the government of Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif. Seventy-four interpellations have been submitted so far, 30 of them, said Islamist MP Hamdi Hassan, by Muslim Brotherhood MPs -- "a very small number of interpellations when compared with the number of Muslim Brotherhood MPs," he pointed out. Hassan indicated that in a departure from previous practice the Brotherhood will this year focus on quality rather than quantity when it comes to questions. "In the past the bloc's MPs attempted to submit as many interpellations as possible even though NDP control of parliament meant most of them were ignored." The Brotherhood's interpellations in the current session will instead concentrate on issues of pressing public interest, including the gutting of major public buildings such as Shura Council and the National Theatre by flames, the death of more than 100 inhabitants of the East Cairo district of Dweiqa following a landslide and the involvement of a number of businessmen members of the NDP in scandals ranging from anti-trust practices to corruption. One major focus of the Brotherhood MPs will be what they claim are torture practices and human rights abuses proliferating in Egyptian prison cells and police stations. Gamal Zahran, an independent MP and professor of economics and political science at Suez Canal University, charges that the NDP majority exercise little short of a dictatorship in parliament. He emphasises that parliaments in five Arab countries -- Yemen, Bahrain, Kuwait, Morocco and Lebanon -- allow independent and opposition MPs to fill positions on parliamentary committees. Zahran has filed 11 interpellations so far, one of which accuses Nazif of offering large sums of cash to NDP MPs in order to secure their votes on controversial laws. The sums, Nazif said last year, were government grants for which all MPs are entitled to apply, and are intended to fund job- creating development projects in individual constituencies. Mustafa Bakri, a pan-Arabist independent MP, has submitted 10 interpellations critical of the government's liberal economic and privatisation policies. Bakri also complained that the government had helped European and American civil society organisations impose a political Western agenda on Egyptian society.
