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Al-Ahram Weekly 17 - 23 February 2000 Issue No. 469 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 17 - 23 February 2000 Issue No. 469
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Dispute settlement row
By Gamal Essam El-Din
People's Assembly (PA) Speaker Fathi Sorour has this week given his personal approval to a new government bill aimed to speed up the settlement of administrative disputes which arise between citizens and state agencies. Sorour's personal intervention in the preliminary debates over the draft law -- officially dubbed as "the dispute settlement law" -- was decided on Monday in an attempt to allay fears that it would be at the expense of the judiciary's sovereignty.
According to Justice Minister Farouq Seif El-Nasr, the bill, which faced strong criticism in the Shura Council last week, is part of a government programme designed to achieve greater legal stability in society. "The number of citizens to lodge complaints against state authorities reached 334,000 in the last few years. These complaints, which have yet to be settled by the State Council and ordinary courts, are now a big source of dispute between citizens and state agencies. They are also the cause of big trouble for court judges, who usually take years to give a final judgement on this kind of legal dispute," said Seif El-Nasr.
In order to provide swift and fair settlements, said Seif El-Nasr, the bill seeks to form 1,000 "dispute settlement committees", with the objective of reconciling the disputing parties. Each committee will be entrusted, within 60 days, with realising a settlement for as many as 300 legal disputes.
The reconciliation decisions of each of these committees, however, will not represent final court orders. Rather, these decisions "will act as reconciliation or mediation decisions, though they will be considered as final solutions in cases where the two quarreling parties agree to them. In the case of one party's rejection, this party could contest the committee's decision before the court."
In spite of this, Seif El-Nasr contended, the bill is expected to dramatically relieve court circuits of the huge burden represented by the immense number of administrative disputes, while contributing "to expanding legal stability in society." He said, however, that disputes in which the Ministry of Defence and Military Production is involved will be excluded from the application of this law.
One of the most controversial points in the government bill is that as many as 1,100 retired judges will be recruited to head the suggested dispute settlement committees. The bill states that in each government ministry, authority and governorate, a dispute settlement committee will be formed under the chairmanship of a retired court judge (over 65 years in age).
When it came up for debate before the Shura Council last week, however, the bill was slammed by a number of deputies. The former prosecutor-general Ragaa El-Arabi surprised Shura deputies and the justice minister by severely attacking the suggested law. According to El-Arabi, the bill contradicts with the policy statement delivered by Prime Minister Atef Ebeid before parliament on 18 December. "Ebeid announced that the decisions of the suggested reconciliation committees will be binding for the government. The bill, however, states that the decisions of these committees will not be binding to the government and rather they will be treated as 'recommendations' for the two parties of dispute," said El-Arabi.
He argued that the arbitrariness of state agencies towards citizens and their employees has led to the burgeoning of administrative disputes in society. "To curb this growing phenomenon in government agencies, the decisions of the suggested reconciliation committees must be binding," said El-Arabi. He also argued that the bill would require huge budgetary allocations to fund the payment of the retired judges who will head the committees.
Members of the State Council also announced their objection to the suggested law. They described it as an infringement on the State Council, which is solely empowered to pass judgements on administrative disputes. They also argued that the exacerbation of such disputes in society was largely due to the arbitrary behaviour of government agencies and their taking every possible means to delay disputes in their favour.
Mindful of the above criticism, Sorour -- who dismissed that the bill was an infringement on the State Council's authority -- and Seif El-Nasr decided this week to throw their weight behind the bill. The two agreed that making the decisions of the reconciliation committees binding to the government would undermine the bill's philosophy. "It should be clear to all that the decisions of these committees will be merely taken as recommendations. It is just court orders that must be binding to the government. State agencies will have the option to -- or not to -- abide by them," said Sorour.
