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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 May - 2 June 1999 Issue No. 431 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 May - 2 June 1999 Issue No. 431
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Living Features Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Taking liberties
By Amir Salem *
The development of a society requires more than freeing the market and removing obstacles to the activities of Egyptian and foreign investors. It requires real political and democratic reforms.
Among these reforms, a law on civil associations that will liberate civic action and remove legal, political and bureaucratic restrictions, is of vital importance.
The state took a cautious step forward by holding several conferences with civil associations, to get to know their views on the draft law. It even allowed a few representatives to join the committee entrusted with formulating the law. The committee was headed by the minister of social affairs and the deputy minister of justice, later joined by the deputy minister of interior and the president of the General Federation of Associations.
When an agreement was reached, the draft was sent to the State Council for revision, then to the Council of Ministers for verification, and then on to the People's Assembly.
But we were all unpleasantly taken aback when we realised that the Council of Ministers had sent on to the People's Assembly a draft law different to the one formulated by our committee. The draft put forward by the Council of Ministers takes us back up the dark tunnel we were in at the start. The government draft restricts civil action through the centralised control of associations, which tramples many constitutional rights.
The Council of Ministers' draft is simply an exercise in crushing civil institutions, like political parties and trade unions before them. This is a serious blow -- we will not know just how serious until it is too late.
*This week's Soapbox speaker is the director of the Legal Research and Resource Centre for Human Rights and member of the drafting committee of the NGO law.
