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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 23 - 29 November 2000 Issue No.509 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 23 - 29 November 2000 Issue No.509
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Rank-and-file dissenters
By Gamal Essam El-DinThe newly-elected People's Assembly is scheduled to hold a procedural sitting on 13 December to choose a speaker and two speaker deputies. The same sitting will also witness the swearing in of parliament's 454 members and the election of chairmen for 18 parliamentary committees.
On 16 December, President Hosni Mubarak will address a joint session of the new parliament and the consultative Shura Council to outline government policies and targets.
To date, 442 candidates have made it to the new parliament after three-phase elections that began on 18 October and ended on 14 November. President Mubarak, as empowered by the constitution, is expected to appoint 10 MPs to swell the number of deputies to 452. Moreover, elections for two parliamentary seats in Alexandria's Al-Raml district will have to be held soon to raise the number of MPs to a total 454.
In many ways, the shape of the new parliament is expected to be different from that of the outgoing Assembly. Some 329 members of the outgoing parliament, or about 65 per cent, lost their seats in the elections. They include 317 NDP MPs, six deputies for three opposition parties, and six independents.
In the new Assembly, the NDP will maintain a majority despite the fact that as many as 276 of its candidates suffered defeat.
In all, the NDP fielded 446 candidates -- 170 of them winning, 276 losing. The Interior Ministry, however, announced that as many as 218 winning independents were either NDP members or had subsequently joined NDP ranks to swell the number of its parliamentary seats to 388, up from 38 per cent to 85.5 per cent. In the 1995 elections, the NDP won 319 seats; 91 winning independents also joined its ranks to raise its majority to 410 seats, or around 90 per cent.
Equally poor was the performance of 11 opposition parties. Out of 443 candidates they fielded, a mere 16 won. Seven seats went to the liberal Wafd Party; six to the leftist Tagammu; two to the Arab Nasserist Party; and one to the Liberal Party. Seven women and three Christians also made it to the Assembly.
Contrary to expectations, independent candidates won the largest number of seats. Running for election were 3,076 independent hopefuls, 256 of whom, including the 218 who joined the NDP, won seats, compared to 111 in 1995.
The independents include 17 members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, plus two more with Islamist sympathies. This unprecedented triumph makes the Brotherhood the leading opposition force in the new parliament. It is balanced, however, by what promises to be a leftist group of 13 MPs. In addition to the six members of the Tagammu Party and the two members of the Arab Nasserist Party, five winning independents have Nasserist sympathies.
In economic terms, the new Assembly will be divided into two rival camps: a majority with liberal tendencies versus a minority who oppose liberalisation and privatisation policies. The liberal camp will be made up of strange bed-fellows: the NDP, the Wafd and the Brotherhood. Attesting to this expectation is the fact that a large number of the representatives of the three groups are involved in private business activity. Out of 50 businessmen candidates fielded by the NDP, 15 won seats, plus 10 businessmen who won as independents.
The NDP's losses are partly due to the fact that the election process was placed for the first time under full judicial supervision. Some winning independents refused to join NDP ranks -- although, confusingly, they were said by the Interior Ministry to have done so.
One of them is Mohamed Khalil Qeweita, an independent who won the professionals' seat in the Damietta district of Faraskour at the expense of Diaeddin Dawoud, leader of the Nasserist Party.
"I was surprised to see my name listed by the Interior Ministry as one of the winning NDP candidates. I had resigned from the NDP three weeks before the elections. I announced at the time that it was a grave mistake for me to be an NDP member," Qeweita told Al-Ahram Weekly.
Another independent, Rifaat El-Gamil, who won in the Damietta district of Kafr Saad, also refused to join the NDP. El-Gamil is a businessman who heads the Damietta Association of Investors.
The two apparently reflect a new awareness among winning candidates that their success was due to their popularity in their districts and not to the privilege of being NDP candidates.
"In previous elections, it was true that running as an NDP candidate guaranteed 70 per cent of success. This has gone forever as a result of the full judicial supervision. I hope that NDP leaders are not shocked to find that a large number of their party's deputies in the new parliament strongly object to the government's policies and even adopt opposite positions," Qeweita said.
Two leading NDP officials were singled out for criticism. They are Youssef Wali, the party's secretary-general, and Kamal El-Shazli, NDP secretary for organisational affairs and Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs. The latter is expected to be confronted by a leftist opposition demanding the amendment of the 1956 Law on the Exercise of Political Rights.
El-Badri Farghali, a member of the leftist Tagammu Party, told the Weekly that the elections proved that judicial supervision will never be complete unless the judicial authority takes charge from beginning to end.
"When it turned out that the NDP's losses were staggering in the first and second stages of elections, the Interior Ministry decided to intervene in the third stage by preventing citizens from voting. This is a new form of rigging and this is why we demand, in the new draft law, an independent judicial committee to supervise elections from A to Z," Farghali said.
Fathi Sorour is expected to remain speaker for a third term. As for chairmen of parliamentary committees, major changes will be introduced. Eight chairmen of these committees lost their seats in elections and have to be replaced.
Hamdi El-Konayessi, chairman of Egyptian Radio, is expected to head the Culture and Information Committee, and Mahmoud El-Sherif, a former minister of local administration, is likely to chair the Local Administration Committee.
Related stories:
Dreaming of better times
Watch this space
The meaning of success
The new equation 16 - 22 November 2000
Rough riding in round three 16 - 22 November 2000
Legal nuances 16 - 22 November 2000
See Elections 2000
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