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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 9 -15 November 2000 Issue No.507 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 9 -15 November 2000 Issue No.507
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Urgent matters
By Khaled Dawoud
A flood of appeals and counter-appeals by candidates running in the third and last stage of elections, which started yesterday, kept voters wondering until the last minute whom they could support at the ballot box. The ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), already embarrassed by the poor performance of its official candidates in the first and second stages of the ballot, seemed to be the party most threatened by the appeals filed by its opponents in several constituencies.
Abul-Enein
Ghali
Lakah
Srour
Soliman
The action began in the Nile Delta governorate of Daqahliya, where candidate Noshi Ali Hassan contested the credentials of his opponent, Ilhami Abdel-Latif, and asked for his exclusion on the grounds that he has both Dutch and Egyptian nationality. The first-degree Administrative Court rejected Hassan's request, but he successfully appealed with the Supreme Administrative Court.
The higher court, whose verdicts are final, did not only ban Abdel-Latif from running as a candidate, but also ordered the removal of his name from the list of voters. The Supreme Administrative Court, quoting article 90 of the Constitution, concluded that "each member of the People's Assembly has to take an oath that he will uphold the nation's safety and look after the people's interest. Thus, it cannot be imagined that the person who is required to look after the country's interest may share his loyalty to Egypt with another country." The court added that while the law allows Egyptians to have another nationality in addition to their original one, they cannot run for parliamentary elections or join the military service if they do so because of the sensitive nature of these posts.
The ruling flung the door wide open before a number of similar appeals against prominent NDP candidates, including two cabinet ministers. Candidates running against Economy Minister Youssef Boutros Ghali, in Shubra, and Housing Minister Ibrahim Soliman, in Gamaliya, claimed that the two ministers have American and Canadian citizenship respectively. Business tycoon and NDP candidate in Giza, Mohamed Abul-Enein, independent candidate Rami Lakah, running in Daher, and member of the opposition Wafd Party's Supreme Authority Mounir Fakhri Abdel-Nour, running in Wayli, all faced similar appeals because they allegedly have French nationality as well as Egyptian.
Except for Lakah, who lost his case but filed a counter-appeal, the candidates who faced the dual nationality appeals won their cases after providing the necessary papers confirming that they did not carry a second nationality.
However, a different kind of appeal was filed against Ghali, Soliman and Abul-Enein. Their opponents argued that none of the three had the right to run in the districts which they chose because they did not come from those areas in the first place and were not registered on their lists of voters. Indeed, one of the main slogans Soliman's opponents raised in Gamaliya since he announced that he was running there was that "we want someone who belongs to our community." The housing and the economy ministers -- and Abul- Enein for that matter -- have probably never visited Gamaliya, Shubra or Giza before, argued those who filed the appeals. However, on Tuesday, the Administrative Court also turned down these appeals, which means that they would indeed be competing in the third round.
The cabinet minister who seemed to be facing the greatest trouble on the grounds that he did not belong to the area where he was running is Sayed Mashaal, minister of state for military production, who is running in Helwan. Mashaal lost the case filed against him by his opponent, as well as his own counter-appeal. But he filed a second counter-appeal, which means that he was eligible to run.
He and Lakah, the prominent business tycoon running in Daher, made use of loopholes existing in the complicated Egyptian legal system and filed the counter-appeals with Cairo's Urgent Matters Court, and not the Supreme Administrative Court. The Urgent Matters Court decided to pronounce its decision in early December, or after elections had taken place already. As a result, both Lakah and Mashaal, too, are eligible to run.
A judicial source who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly on condition of anonymity sharply criticised the candidates who resorted to the Urgent Matters Court to suspend the rulings issued by the Administrative Court. "The sentences were issued by the Administrative Court. This means they must be appealed in front of the Supreme Administrative Court, and not the Urgent Matters Court," said the source.
Resorting to the Urgent Matters Court has a very simple aim. In case any of the candidates who resorted to the Urgent Matters Court succeeded in entering parliament after winning the elections, it is only the People's Assembly which would be authorised to rule whether their election was legal. Thus, any further court rulings would be useless.
Meanwhile, and as the electoral system in Egypt states that at least 50 per cent of MPs should be workers and peasants, each candidate has to determine beforehand the category he belonged to. This opened the door for another loophole through which candidates could contest the credentials of their adversaries in order to exclude them from the elections. For example, Abdel-Aziz Mustafa, NDP candidate in Qasr Al-Nil constituency in Cairo, was running for the workers' seat, while his colleague from the ruling party, Hossam Badrawi, was running in the professionals'. Last week, the Administrative Court ruled that Mustafa's category must be changed from workers' to professionals', meaning that he would run against his own party colleague, Badrawi. This opened the door for an independent or opposition candidate to fill the workers' seat. Six more NDP candidates faced a similarly embarrassing situation, with the Administrative Court ruling at the last minute that they run as professionals instead of workers.
Yet, the seven NDP candidates whose category was changed from professional to worker only a few days before the ballot also resorted to the Urgent Matters Court to suspend the Administrative Court's rulings. The Urgent Matters Court said it would rule in their cases on 9,10 and 11 December.
According to the law, any candidate running for a parliamentary seat has to be Egyptian and literate, must have undertaken the compulsory military service and has not been indicted for a criminal offence. Wafd party candidate Mursi El-Sheikh, opponent of NDP candidate and Parliament Speaker Fathi Sorour in Sayeda Zeinab, filed a lawsuit against him with the Administrative Court, claiming that had dodged military service. Sorour presented papers proving that all men born like him in 1932 were exempt from the military service. The court rejected El-Sheikh's case. However, the court accepted a second lawsuit filed by El-Sheikh against Sorour, accusing the latter of adding 5,000 names to the lists of voters in Sayeda Zeinab a few months ago, although they did not live there, and worked in fact at a factory in one of the new satellite cities.
On Tuesday, the Administrative Court also ruled that a candidate in Sahel, Cairo, Mustafa El-Nahhas, could not run because he could not read or write. El-Nahhas reacted: "No problem. I will go to the Urgent Matters Court which is likely to issue its ruling after the elections have taken place."
Related stories:
See Elections 2000
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