19 - 25 July 2001
Issue No.543
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 19 - 25 July 2001 Issue No.543 |
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Small but vociferous
Although outnumbered by Muslim Brotherhood members, leftists are proving the most vociferous opposition group in objecting to government policies. Gamal Essam El-Din reports
Political analysts believe that leftists delivered the most impressive performance by an opposition group in the first session of the People's Assembly, which adjourned a week ago for the summer recess.
Abdel-Nour El-Hariri Mursi
Outnumbered by members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, leftists make up the second largest opposition group. There are 17 Brotherhood members and 15 leftists: six Tagammu party members, seven Nasserists and two "nationalists."
According to The People's Assembly's Record, leftists topped other parliamentary groups in terms of fully exercising their supervisory role as well as objecting to government-sponsored legislation. "This is evident from the fact that five out of the nine parliamentary interpellations (questions that must be answered by cabinet ministers) were delivered by leftist deputies. One of these interpellations, which dealt with corruption in the government-sponsored privatisation programme, was referred to the prosecutor- general so that its allegations about financial irregularities on the stock market would be investigated," the Record said.
Abul-Ezz El-Hariri, a member of the Tagammu party, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the leftist group took pride in having strongly objected to all economic and budgetary bills that came up for debate, because the group believed that the government of Prime Minister Atef Ebeid favoured capitalist interests at the expense of the people. "We also tried our best to offset the negative effects of appointing businessmen as chairmen of the Assembly's most important economic committees," El- Hariri said.
Addressing the closing meeting of the first session, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Kamal El-Shazli said the government was keen to respond to all interpellations because it "has nothing to hide from the people." Many opposition deputies interviewed by the Weekly, however, agreed that the government did its best to dodge four interpellations about corruption in state-owned banks and the Social Development Fund (SDF).
Compared with leftists, the performance of the Brotherhood's 17 deputies, the largest opposition group, was by no means impressive. To the surprise of many, Group 17, as it came to be dubbed by Minister El-Shazli, adopted what they called a policy of "objective opposition" to government policies and focused its attention on "issues of morality." Mohamed Mursi, the group's spokesman, told the Weekly: "Raising issues of indecency, especially in the sector of culture, topped our achievements. We tabled questions about pornographic books, the Miss Egypt beauty contest, and the immorality propagated by the Al- Kawakib (Stars) magazine."
Three of the Brotherhood's deputies also launched an attack against Education Minister Hussein Kamel Bahaaeddin, accusing him of dealing unfairly with school teachers who had Islamist sympathies.
To the chagrin of leftists, Brotherhood deputies declined to coordinate positions with other opposition and independent groups. "Brotherhood deputies refused to join the opposition in objecting to the government's policy statement and state budget. While we sought to rally the largest number of deputies against the statement and the budget, the Brothers' reluctance reduced the number of opponents to a mere 19," El-Hariri said.
Equally disappointing was the performance of the liberal Wafd Party. The decision last March of the Wafd's chairman Noaman Gomaa to expel two of the party's deputies, Ayman Nour and Mohamed Farid Hassanein, from its ranks left the Wafd's parliamentary group in shambles. The performance of Mounir Fakhri Abdel-Nour, the party's parliamentary spokesman, was described as pallid. Abdel-Nour, a business magnate, gave rubber-stamp approval to many government- sponsored bills. These included the mortgage bill and another bill which gave the finance minister a mandate to issue Eurobonds on international markets.
Ayman Nour said it was a shame that the Wafd party prevented its deputies from directing interpellations to Economy Minister Youssef Boutros Ghali about corruption in the banking sector.
The Wafd party now has five deputies. Two of them, Abdel-Nour and Fouad Badrawi, are businessmen, and the remaining three have leftist sympathies. The three, who hail from rural and labour communities, clashed with Abdel-Nour because of his "mild objection to the government's business-related bills." Seif Mahmoud, one of the three, told the Weekly: "I'm a strong opponent of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) and Ebeid's government. For me, the Wafd party is just a party privileged with a daily newspaper which would give prominence to my performance in parliament," he said. He was the only Wafdist deputy who directed an interpellation to the government, charging that the licensing in 1997 of Egypt's first mobile telephone network was saddled with corruption and irregularities.
One of the opposition's striking achievements in the first session was that it caused some NDP deputies not to toe their party line. This was mainly because they had won their seats after running as independents. Dissension from the NDP line became clear at the beginning of the session, with more than 100 NDP deputies supporting opposition candidate Ayman Nour against NDP candidate Amal Osman for the post of deputy speaker. And in May, eight NDP deputies joined opposition and independent deputies in walking out to protest a sales tax bill. Atef El- Ashmouni, an "NDP-independent," was one of 20 NDP deputies who organised in May a sit-in to protest the speed at which laws were being passed. El-Ashmouni, a deputy for Eastern Cairo's Ain Shams district, was about to be referred by the party to an ethics committee, but he made an apology. He told the Weekly that he cannot approve bills that go against the interests of the under-privileged. "The NDP should realise that what partisan commitment means to many NDP deputies is the commitment to the interests of the people," El-Ashmouni said.
Adel Eid, an "independent nationalist," told the Weekly that the reluctance of NDP deputies to toe their party's line was probably the reason why the party's leadership was seriously considering a change of the current electoral system. "They think a new electoral system is necessary to bring their deputies under complete control," Eid said.
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