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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 -10 February 1999 Issue No. 415 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 -10 February 1999 Issue No. 415
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Book Fair Economy Opinion Culture Features Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters MPs lash out
at strategic reportBy Gamal Essam El-Din
Political analysts and parliamentary deputies were taken by surprise last week when the usually reserved Arab Strategic Report (ASR), issued annually by the Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, was harshly candid in criticising the performance of the incumbent People's Assembly. The report took "the political order" to task for this poor performance as well as the negative image of the People's Assembly. It also urged President Hosni Mubarak to disband the Assembly and conduct early parliamentary elections to coincide with next October's referendum on renewing his tenure for a fourth term.
"These elections should be provided with an unprecedented number of guarantees to ensure that the new parliament will be more representative of the various political trends and also more capable of playing its legislative and supervisory roles," the report said. In more specific terms, the report argued that the one-party system, which was introduced in the 1950s, remains practically in force until the present day, even after the switch in the 1970s to the multi-party system.
According to the report, the MPs' failure to shoulder their legislative and supervisory responsibilities and their reluctance to show up for the Assembly's sessions are adequate reasons for disbanding the Assembly and organising early elections.
Several MPs interviewed by Al-Ahram Weekly commended the practice followed by such renowned research centres as Al-Ahram's to bring the performance of parliament under objective evaluation and scrutiny and expose its shortcomings to "the political leadership" and public opinion. However, they agreed, it is by no means commendatory that these centres should go so far in their scrutiny, as to give themselves the liberty to suggest to President Mubarak that he order the dissolution of parliament. "These types of measures should always be the prerogative of the president," said an MP, who asked not to be named. He added that the report, by urging the president to disband parliament, appeared to be attempting to drive a wedge between Mubarak and the legislative authority.
Arab Strategic Report
However, for liberal MPs such as Ayman Nour of the Wafd Party, Al-Ahram's ASR was very courageous and objective in evaluating the performance of the People's Assembly. "It is highly recommended that such think-tanks as Al-Ahram seek to bring political life under close analysis. Parliament is an essential part of political life and bringing it under scrutiny is not only an academic function but also a responsibility to public opinion. "Because citizens have almost lost confidence in the official information media, they are happy to see that there are still unbiased centres eager to provide factual, neutral and objective information about political life," said Nour.
He believes that the ASR was very successful in exposing the grave shortcomings of parliament and political parties and the dangers these pose to the future of democracy in this country. Nour affirmed that the major part of the criticism levelled by the ASR against parliament had been voiced in the past by political parties and independent politicians. "What is courageous here is that it was expressed by what is considered by many as a semi-official press institution, namely Al-Ahram. This watershed report will give added credibility and respect to Al-Ahram and its Centre for Strategic and Political Studies," Nour said.
He agreed, however, that the report should not have given itself the right to recommend certain policies to the president. "The report's mission is to expose shortcomings as they are without telling the president what he should do and what he should not," Nour concluded.
But deputies of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) charged that Al-Ahram's ASR was to a large extent biased against the People's Assembly. Ibrahim El-Nimiki, deputy chairman of the Assembly's legislative and constitutional committee, agreed that there is a pressing need to introduce urgent reforms to political activity, especially in terms of amending the constitution. "I and several NDP deputies agree that the present constitution should be discarded as soon as possible because it clearly falls short of Egypt's ambitions for democracy in the new century. I also agree with Al-Ahram's report that political parties are threatened with collapse and that the People's Assembly suffers from grave shortcomings. The report, however, was certainly mistaken in arguing that MPs were mainly responsible for these shortcomings. It was clear that in most cases the report largely depended on information from opposition newspapers. As a matter of fact, these newspapers usually resort to using false information to distort the image of the Assembly and show that its members are only required to applaud. This information is entirely unfounded and should not be used by such a renowned centre as Al-Ahram's," El-Nimiki said.
He argued that the report based its claim that deputies regularly fail to show up for People's Assembly sessions on photos published by opposition newspapers. "While this was a big mistake, the report ignored the remarkable performance of several MPs, be they opposition or NDP. It should have cited the criticism levelled by NDP MPs, for example, against US grant agreements and corruption in the public sector and local municipalities as well as calls to amend the constitution. Worse, the report even described the outcry made by NDP MPs against Prime Minister Kamal El-Ganzouri on the opening day of the parliamentary session as the product of a kind of 'tacit agreement' between deputies and the government. This is a simplistic interpretation because it was a genuine attempt to force the government to deal with elected deputies with respect and veneration. We managed to exercise our supervisory role very forcefully and compel ministers to listen to our questions and provide answers," El-Nimiki said.
