2 - 8 August 2001
Issue No.545
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 2 - 8 August 2001 Issue No.545 |
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A last recess?
Members of parliament may discover that their current holiday is a lot longer than expected. Gamal Essam El-Din reports
No sooner had parliament adjourned for the summer recess than the majority of MPs left for their favourite summer resorts on the Mediterranean and Red Sea coasts.
But the deputies won't be able to flee Cairo's scorching heat for long. They will have to return soon to address the prickly issue of appeals contesting many of last year's election results and the validity of their parliamentary membership.
Discussion of these appeals in parliament's Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee is expected to take place soon, under the watchful scrutiny of public opinion. The 29-member committee will have to deal with appeals filed with Administrative Courts as well as the Court of Cassation. In the past, appeals that contested parliamentary membership were usually ignored by the Assembly on the grounds that the "House is sovereign" over the validity of its membership.
But this time, things are different. Assembly Speaker Fathi Sorour explained that ahead of last year's parliamentary elections, administrative courts had decided that certain candidates should be forbidden to run for various reasons, including holding dual nationality and dodging military service. Most ran anyway, having lodged appeals against the administrative court rulings. But this time, President Hosni Mubarak has firmly instructed parliament fully to respect the court rulings on the validity or otherwise of membership of some deputies, even if the rulings negatively affect large numbers of MPs.
In addressing the rulings of these courts, Sorour cautions, the Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee faces two problems. "The first is that these rulings must be implemented by the Interior Ministry, rather than the People's Assembly. They were issued in the first place to order the Interior Ministry to bar certain candidates from running in elections," said Sorour. He added, "Just because the Interior Ministry declined to implement these rulings does not mean that the Assembly can ignore them. The Assembly will implement them but, first, it will have to deal with another problem."
Explaining, Sorour said that deputies who were barred from running by Administrative Courts filed counter-appeals with the Higher Administrative Court, after exhausting the technicality of lodging appeals with the Urgent Matters Court. "This means that we cannot have a final position on the administrative courts' rulings before the Higher Administrative Court takes a final decision about them," Sorour said.
Some legal experts objected to Sorour's argument. Ibrahim El-Nimiki, deputy chairman of the Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee of the outgoing parliament, told Al-Ahram Weekly that although the Interior Ministry had ignored the administrative courts' rulings, the People's Assembly must implement them immediately. "The rulings of administrative courts take immediate effect and must be implemented by the Interior Ministry as well as the People's Assembly. Sorour knows quite well that the Interior Ministry declined to implement these rulings because the deputies who were barred from running by administrative courts used the technicality of filing appeals with the Urgent Matters Court to win time, contest elections and then acquire membership," said El-Nimiki.
El-Nimiki also contended that Sorour's argument that the Higher Administrative Court must take a final decision first should not be an excuse for the Assembly to refuse implementing the administrative courts' rulings. "Sorour knows quite well that in handing down their rulings, administrative courts were guided by principles laid down by the Higher Administrative Court, especially in the area of dual nationality and military service. This is the reason why Sorour should not wait for final decisions to be handed down by the Higher Administrative Court," he said.
In any case, if the Higher Administrative Court upholds the rulings of administrative courts, the Assembly is likely to have to drop the membership of some 22 deputies. They are led by businessman Rami Lakah (for holding dual nationality and dodging military service), Sayed Mashaal, minister of state for military production, (for running in a constituency in which he is not registered as a voter), and Abdel-Aziz Mustafa and Fayda Kamel, respectively chairpersons of the Manpower and Culture Committees, (for running as workers and not fi'at, professionals).
The Assembly will face an even tougher battle in dealing with appeals filed with the Court of Cassation. According to Article 93 of the Constitution, the Court of Cassation is empowered to rule on appeals contesting the results of elections, though it is the People's Assembly, with the approval of a two thirds majority, that has the final say.
Fathi Naguib, chairman of the Court of Cassation, has said that 920 appeals were filed with the court following the 2000 elections. So far, the court has investigated 100 and informed the Assembly of its decisions on 40. It will inform the Assembly of its decisions concerning the remaining 60 within days, he said.
Speaker Sorour confirmed that, in its first session, the Assembly was informed by the Court of Cassation of its decisions on 40 appeals. "Out of this number, the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee discussed and rejected 37 appeals simply because they had been rejected by the Court of Cassation," said Sorour.
El-Nimiki, who is a member of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) believes that the Court of Cassation will decide to invalidate the election results of at least 70 per cent of all constituencies. "Let us assume that the committee will respect the decisions of the Court of Cassation, which is expected to invalidate the election of 70 per cent of deputies. And let us assume that the committee will equally respect the rulings of administrative courts which invalidated the membership of at least 22 deputies. This means that the membership of more than three quarters of deputies will be invalid. Which will mean that the House must be dissolved," said El-Nimiki.
And what would happen if the Assembly refused to obey the court rulings? A refusal may also produce the same result by leading President Mubarak to order the dissolution of the Assembly, El-Nimiki suggested.
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