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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 April 2000 Issue No. 478 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 April 2000 Issue No. 478
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Heritage Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters
MPs settle accounts with Ganzouri
By Gamal Essam El-DinAlthough dismissed by President Hosni Mubarak in a dramatic cabinet change six months ago, former Prime Minister Kamal El-Ganzouri continues to be a favourite target of verbal attacks in the People's Assembly. Throughout his more than three years in office (January 1996 -- October 1999), numerous MPs regarded El-Ganzouri as conceited and autocratic, feeling that he dealt with them in an arrogant way. His departure gave them the chance to hit back.
Following El-Ganzouri's dismissal last October, many MPs, mostly those belonging to the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) and the Wafd Party, have seized every possible opportunity to level accusations against him and his cabinet affairs minister, Talaat Hammad. Accusations against El-Ganzouri include tampering with the Social Development Fund's deposit accounts, concluding an illegal contract with a multinational construction corporation to build a motorists' tunnel in the Al-Azhar district, and involving the government in costly mega-development projects, especially the Aswan iron and steel project.
During last week's parliamentary sittings, the anti-El-Ganzouri crescendo of allegations peaked. In a debate on the state's 1997/1998 balance sheet, He was accused of committing a series of irregular acts. To observers' surprise, the attack was joined by two politically influential figures: Fathi Sorour, speaker of the People's Assembly, and Zakaria Azmi, chief of the presidential staff.
Azmi said that he was shocked by the facts contained in the Parliament's Planning and Budget Committee's report on the accounts. "When I read the report, I was gripped by severe disappointment and prayed to God to help Egypt," Azmi said. "It is true that the legal and constitutional irregularities cited by the report were committed by a previous government... but they should be investigated and wrongdoers should be punished," Azmi added. He urged the establishment of a fact-finding committee to investigate the irregularities.
In his review of the report, Mahmoud Abul-Nasr, chairman of the Planning and Budget Committee, alleged that El-Ganzouri's government had refrained from carrying out the economic measures required to address the financial imbalances of state-owned economic institutions. "This forced the institutions in the 1997/1998 fiscal year to acquire illegal and unlicensed funding that amounted to LE5.5 billion," Abul-Nasr said. He explained that the word "illegal" in this context implied that El-Ganzouri had decided to make these unlicensed budgetary allocations without seeking the necessary approval of the People's Assembly and the Finance Ministry or even of the cabinet.
Abul-Nasr also said that El-Ganzouri had personally approved cancelling the debts of some state-owned organisations, especially the Egyptian National Railway Authority, for no justifiable economic reason. These debts, amounting to LE1.4 billion, were mainly owed to the National Investment Bank (NIB), whose board was chaired by El-Ganzouri himself.
Gawdat El-Malat, chairman of the Central Auditing Agency (CAA), then joined in the outcry against El-Ganzouri. He said the financial irregularities that had occurred in the 1997/98 fiscal year amounted to a sum of LE40 billion, which lacked the prior approval of both the People's Assembly and the Finance Ministry.
In response, Finance Minister Medhat Hassanein argued that the state-owned organisations were in desperate need of the illegal funding because of their precarious financial positions. Fathi Sorour, the Assembly speaker, intervened to ask Hassanein: "Suppose that these organisations sought to have your approval of these irregularities, would you give it without first seeking the Assembly's approval?" Hassanein responded that it was necessary for him to seek the Assembly's first.
Commenting on Hassanein's answer, Sorour said that "what happened should ring alarm bells for all because the Assembly does not give rubber stamp approvals." This was the second time that Sorour has lashed out at El-Ganzouri's government. Two weeks earlier, Sorour accused El-Ganzouri of resorting excessively to the issuance of military orders, in his capacity as military governor under emergency law. "These orders were a clear infringement of the Assembly's legislative mandate," Sorour said.
Wafd MPs joined the verbal attacks against El-Ganzouri, but criticised NDP members for speaking out "too late." Ayman Nour charged that El-Ganzouri's authoritarian actions, as documented by the 1997/1998 balance sheet report, were a "flagrant infringement of the constitution and parliament's authority."
Some analysts believe that the verbal attacks against El-Ganzouri could be an attempt by some MPs to make political capital ahead of the November parliamentary elections.
