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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 November 1999 Issue No. 454 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 November 1999 Issue No. 454
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters NDP calls opening shots in parliamentary battle
By Gamal Essam El-DinOn 10 November the People's Assembly opens a new session, with an agenda packed with controversial items. A day earlier, President Hosni Mubarak will meet with parliamentarians from the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) to choose the Assembly's speaker and two deputies for the new session. As expected by most political observers, the Assembly's first procedural meeting will witness the re-election, for the tenth consecutive time -- a first in the nation's 133 year-old parliamentary history -- of Fathi Sorour as speaker. Amal Othman and El-Sayed Rashed will be also retained as the speaker's two deputies. Sorour also serves at present as speaker of the Arab Parliamentary Union (APU).
The Assembly's new session, the last before parliamentary elections are held next summer, follows one of the most eventful summer recesses in parliamentary history. Following long and humiliating investigations by prosecution authorities, six members of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) were put on trial for a variety of offences, ranging from banking fraud to hooliganism. The trial exposed NDP MPs to a hostile press campaign, branding them as "opportunists gone wild."
The press campaign, however, came to a halt and NDP deputies at last breathed a sigh of relief following the dismissal of former Prime Minister Kamal El-Ganzouri in a cabinet change last month. NDP parliamentary deputies were the first to hail El-Ganzouri's dismissal, describing the appointment of Atef Ebeid as the new prime minister as a "very satisfactory step". Most of them welcomed Ebeid as "a political and economic figure who has proved to be mild and cooperative."
Many political analysts saw the cabinet reshuffle as bringing to an end the conflicts that had erupted two years ago between El-Ganzouri and NDP MPs and since then had damaged the image of the People's Assembly in the people's eyes. The conflict, observers note, ended in a victory for NDP leaders.
Equally significant was that Youssef Wali, deputy prime minister and minister of agriculture, and Kamal El-Shazli, minister of state for parliamentary affairs, were among 19 ministers who retained their posts. The two ministers, also acting as NDP secretary-general and assistant secretary-general respectively, had had their wings clipped by El-Ganzouri but eventually emerged triumphant. For example, Kamal El-Shazli, MP for Menoufiya governorate, was quite helpless when then governor of Menoufiya, Adli Hussein, counting on El-Ganzouri's support, decided to challenge the NDP by referring four of its deputies to prosecution authorities so that they might be investigated for alleged financial malpractices. In what is deemed as a second victory for the NDP, Hussein was re-appointed this week as governor of Qalyoubiya while Othman Shahin replaced him as governor of Menoufiya.
Ahmed Taha, an independent MP, told Al-Ahram Weekly that "the NDP MPs hailed the appointment of Ebeid not so much out of admiration for Ebeid, but out of grudges against El-Ganzouri." "The cabinet reshuffle means that Wali and El-Shazli will assume larger roles in the nation's political life and they may be even entrusted with delineating the political landscape during and after parliamentary elections are held next summer," said Taha.
In the new cabinet's first meeting El-Shazli submitted a report, suggesting guidelines for the relationship between the People's Assembly and the government, on the one hand, and between the NDP and the government on the other. El-Shazli said that the government should give greater attention to the viewpoints of MPs and parliamentary committees on a variety of national issues, ranging from the severe housing crisis to unemployment. Many MPs have submitted draft laws that are aimed at regulating various socio-economic activities, he said, and "the government should cooperate with the Assembly in passing these laws and earmarking the budgetary allocations needed for their implementation".
On the other hand, El-Shazli explained that he had agreed with Prime Minister Ebeid that government-sponsored bills should be first discussed by the NDP's committees before being sent for debate by the People's Assembly. El-Shazli revealed that a weekly meeting would be held between MPs and Ebeid in an attempt to find quick solutions to the problems facing citizens in their constituencies.
El-Shazli revealed that a number of draft laws will be prioritised in the final session of the current parliament. "These include the draft laws that are aimed at regulating the performance of local councils, traffic, construction, demolition of old buildings and cooperatives," El-Shazli said.
In a meeting with the board of the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU), Ebeid said that a new labour bill designed to regulate relations between employers and workers in a market economy will be discussed by the People's Assembly in its new session. El-Sayed Rashed, GFTU's chairman, said that he agreed with Ebeid that the draft laws of labour, social insurance, pensions, health insurance and civil service workers should top the legislative agenda of the new parliamentary session.
The long-awaited draft law aimed at removing restrictions on rental values of old buildings will not, however, be submitted to the Assembly in the new session. Housing Minister Mohamed Ibrahim Suleiman announced last week that the government still needs to gather statistics on housing conditions before it submits the bill to the Assembly. "The gathering of these statistics will require a period ranging from three to four years," said Suleiman.
In the meantime, NDP MPs, meeting with President Mubarak next week, are expected to raise the issue of the relationship between parliament and the press. Ahmed Abu Zeid, leader of the NDP majority in parliament, told the Weekly that some newspapers had made use of the confrontation between the former government and parliament to launch aggressive campaigns against MPs.
"As parliamentary elections approach, MPs think that these campaigns could be very detrimental to their image. They want to explain this to President Mubarak and emphasise that a healthy kind of cooperation between them and the government could work in everyone's favour ahead of the next elections," said Abu Zeid.
