26 July - 1 August 2001
Issue No.544
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 26 July - 1 August 2001 Issue No.544 |
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A clean slate
The People's Assembly, which is currently on holiday, may not last out the rest of it's five-year term, reports Gamal Essam El-Din
In a keynote speech given early this month to a meeting of ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) members of the Shura Council, President Hosni Mubarak affirmed the need for a new electoral law which would ensure stability and commitment to national interests. In the president's words: "In light of the results of People's Assembly and Shura Council elections, a legal group has been entrusted with probing the possibility of drafting a new electoral law which would ensure that parties, deputies and citizens uphold national interests.
"We need a parliament that conforms to the constitution and embodies the free will of the people, and is not the product of money changing hands or acts of thuggery," he said.
Mubarak's speech was immediately received with loud applause, but it later sparked off heated debates in political and parliamentary circles.
Many MPs, especially NDP members, expressed apprehensions and misgivings. Several took Mubarak's words as "an explicit warning" that a decision to dissolve the People's Assembly was imminent and that the House would not be allowed to complete its five-year term.
But even more worrisome for some was the rumour that electoral reform would involve the institution of some form of slate system, to replace the current individual candidacy system.
"Nothing new has emerged to justify the scrapping of this system, which has always been favoured by the NDP," Suez City's independent MP Farouk Metwalli told Al-Ahram Weekly. The allegation, Metwalli added, that People's Assembly and Shura Council elections were marred by acts of hooliganism and vote-buying was not enough reason to justify the call for scrapping the individual candidacy system. "The elections of 1990 and 1995 were equally rife with acts of thuggery and bribery," he said.
Metwalli argued that the reason for the sudden hostility to the individual candidacy system was that it confronted the NDP in 2000 with the first election defeat in its 23-year history. "This system, once it was applied under full judicial supervision, not only produced the worst defeat for the NDP, but also largely helped sow the seeds of dissent within the party's parliamentary group," Metwalli said.
Surprisingly, leading NDP parliamentary officials, including Assembly Speaker Fathi Sorour and Kamal El- Shazli, minister of state for parliamentary affairs, have refrained from commenting on the question of electoral reform. Ahead of the 2000 elections, both Sorour and El-Shazli were largely in favour of retaining the individual candidacy system. In December 1999, Sorour went as far as to say: "It is not on the agenda of the government, either at present or in the future, to amend the electoral law or scrap the individual candidacy system."
On the other hand, President Mubarak's call was welcomed by NDP members of the Assembly's and Shura Council's Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committees. These members primarily make up the legal group entrusted by President Mubarak with investigating the possibility of drafting a new electoral law.
Informed sources told the Weekly that the group was headed by former Prime Minister and veteran Shura Council appointed member Atef Sedki, and included Mohamed Moussa and Abdel-Rahman Farag Mohsen, chairmen of the Assembly's and Shura Council's Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committees respectively. It also included Shawki El- Sayed (independent) and Fathi Ragab (NDP), both members of the Shura Council, and Abdel-Rehim Nafie, chairman of NDP's Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee.
The group has two options: either to come up with a refined form of the slate system or introduce a mixture of the individual candidacy and proportional representation slate systems.
The slate system, which obligates the candidates of each political party to run collectively on a single slate in each constituency, was applied twice in 1984 and 1987 -- the latter in combination with the individual system for independents -- but was declared unconstitutional on both occasions by the Supreme Constitutional Court.
"This, however, should not deter us from launching an open dialogue on a new electoral law in order to reach what we hope for in a year or two," President Mubarak said.
In a quick response, Fathi Naguib, deputy chairman of the Shura Council's Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee, suggested to President Mubarak that the mixed electoral system was the best way to realise "the nation's aspiration for a clean parliament."
"In order to ensure that this system will conform to the constitution, the new electoral law should be approved by a public referendum," Ragab said. "This will make it immune to any ruling by the Supreme Constitutional Court."
President Mubarak reacted by instructing the legal group to scrutinise the proposal. Opposition circles received Ragab's proposal with cries of foul play. Hussein Abdel-Razek, chairman of the leftist Tagammu party's political committee, strongly condemned Ragab's suggestion as "a flagrant violation of the constitution."
"The proposal made by Ragab, who is well-known as an old-time 'tailor' of government-sponsored political bills, is a clear infringement on the authority of the People's Assembly, which is solely empowered by the constitution with debating and passing bills," Abdel- Razek said. He argued that nationwide plebiscites were organised only for the purpose of seeking the people's opinion on matters of necessity and urgency.
For their part, NDP legal experts argued that the Supreme Constitutional Court had never ruled that the slate system was unconstitutional as such. "The court merely said that the slate system, as applied in the 1980s, was discriminatory against independent candidates," said Mohamed Moussa, chairman of the People's Assembly's Constitutional and Legislative Committee. This system, he added, once given a legal form that is in line with the constitution, would guarantee equal access to both independent and party candidates.
"More significantly, it will give citizens the chance to vote either for partisan or self-interest considerations. This, unlike in the case of the individual candidacy system, should phase out acts of thuggery and financial bribes as factors in determining the results of elections," Moussa said.
Sorour
El-Shazli
Moussa
Abdel-Razek
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