Supervising the supervisors
Al-Riqabah Al-Barlamaniya fi Al-Nozom Al-Siasiyah: Derasah fi Tagrobat Majlis Al-Shaab (Parliamentary Powers in Government: a Study of the Egyptian People's Assembly), Amr Hashem Rabie, Cairo: Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, August 2002. pp425
This study, originally written as a doctoral thesis in political science, fills a considerable gap in our knowledge of parliamentary systems in general and the Egyptian parliamentary system in particular. Parliamentary supervision of the executive has long been a subject of interest of the author, who has found that studies on this concept in many Third World countries are sorely insufficient, severely hampering the search for paradigms in order to illuminate particular case studies.
Supervision, in the sense that Amr Hashem Rabie intends it, consists of those powers or authorities governments use in order to enforce respect for the law on the part of governing bodies and to safeguard the public welfare. After an overview of the historical development of this concept from Roman times onwards and of its applications in authoritarian and democratic systems, he proceeds to lay out a schema for his study. Parliamentary supervision of the executive, he says, must be examined in terms of the form and powers of both the supervisory body and the body under supervision, the purpose of supervision, the means or tools available, the management of these tools or means and, lastly, the results.
Also important to consider is the political environment in which supervision takes place. Does it tend to the authoritarian/totalitarian or towards the democratic? And, what form, precisely, does the government take? Political science literature, Rabie says, divides contemporary constitutional governments into three types: the parliamentary system, the presidential system and the mixed system, or what Nabil Abdel- Fattah termed the "parli-presidential" system, "as was the case in France following the promulgation of the constitution of the Fourth Republic and as prevails in most countries of the underdeveloped world".
If, in this portion of his study, Rabie focuses primarily on the British, German and American parliamentary systems, his survey of the principles and tools of parliamentary supervision is admirable both for its thoroughness and for its systematic approach. In addition, the contrasts he draws with other parliamentary systems deftly guide readers to what was undoubtedly his premise, which is that the existence of a strong and dynamic multi-party system supports parliamentary supervision of the executive. He also concludes that the primary and most vital common factor these three systems share is the powers they have over the drawing up of the national budget.
Before turning to his main theme, parliamentary supervision of the executive in Egypt until 2001, with special focus on the period from 1984 to 1990, Rabie provides a history of the development of the Egyptian parliament from 1863 to 1976. As useful and interesting as this background is, one is struck by some rather debatable and not fully substantiated conclusions. Few would take issue with the fact that the first parliamentary body, the Maglis Shura Al- Nuwwab (Chamber of Deputies), established by the Khedive Ismail, had no true legislative or supervisory powers, nor with Rabie's description of it as an essentially consultative body, created to support and flatter the regime, whose lavish spending plunged the country into such debt that it paved the way for direct colonialist intervention. On the other hand, he also asserts that the Maglis "formed a constitutional gain and a moral check on government due to its representative capacity of the will of the people" -- an assertion that conflicts with most other studies of the Egyptian constitution of this period.
Later, in his treatment of what he terms the period of "liberal government" (1923-1952), it would be difficult to deny that the 1923 Constitution that brought this government into being reflected conflicting forces in society, specifically the nationalist movement that drove and sustained the 1919 Revolution and the combined forces of the Palace and the British occupation authorities. Certainly, too, it was a shaky period. Thirty-eight cabinets, with an average lifespan of nine months, came and went, and no parliament, with the exception of that elected in 1945, ever completed its full constitutional term. From this, however, he draws the bold conclusion that the parliamentary experience of this period was a failure, leaving us somewhat in the dark with regard to what caused that failure.
Apart from these generalisations, the rest of the study is thorough and solid. Following the Egyptian revolution of 1952 and the introduction of the single state-party system, legislative and executive authorities were effectively combined in the hands of the president, with the charisma of President Abdel-Nasser contributing to the reduction of any residual legislative and supervisory powers of parliament. With the reintroduction of restricted political pluralism, checks and balances still remained heavily weighted in favour of the executive. During this period, from 1976 to the end of the century, there were six parliaments (1976-79, 1979-84, 1984-87, 1987-1990, 1990-95 and 1995-2000), of which only three completed their constitutionally stipulated five-year term.
Parliamentary performance, Rabie observes, was as weak as the party system itself, sharply curtailed by Political Party Law 40 of 1977. He adds that although this law underwent six amendments, the changes did little to facilitate broader political participation through political parties (more than 30 would-be party founders had to resort to litigation in order to obtain licences), which, in turn, contributed to the rise in political violence during the first half of that period. Of particular interest, however, is his comparative analysis of executive versus legislative powers under the constitution, from which one cannot escape the conclusion that, as he puts it, the Egyptian parliament has lacked the fundamental prerequisites for an autonomous political institution and for institutional stability since its inception.
The core of Rabie's work is to be found in the chapter entitled "the Diverse dimensions of the study of parliamentary supervision of the executive in Egypt 1984-90". Taking up about half the book, it is in this chapter that we find his analytical schema, outlined at the beginning of the book, fully elaborated. He categorises members of the two parliaments of this period in terms of class, gender, religious and political affiliation, and in terms of whether they were elected representatives or appointees. Although under the constitution 50 per cent of parliament is to consist of "peasants and workers", in fact, he points out, fraudulent practices in the candidate registration process have effectively rendered this provision meaningless. If this has worked to weaken parliamentary supervision, more important in this process has been the combined effects of economic restructuring since 1974 and the restructuring of the legislature to give pre-eminence to the interests of big business and finance. In the parliaments of 1984-87 and 1987-90, respectively, the ruling National Democratic Party held 87 and 78 per cent of the seats.
Rabie turns next to the parliamentary committees, which, with the support of the Central Auditing Bureau and the Public Prosecutor's Office, constitute parliament's main supervisory tools. His study indicates that parliament's performance in this regard has been nothing less than negligent. A survey he conducted of discussions held at the Central Auditing Bureau (CAB) from 1990 to 1998 revealed their highly selective nature. For example, the threats of exposure party leaders levelled at one another ensured that reports on the financial practices of political parties were never discussed. In the period of the study's focus (1984-90), parliament discussed no more than six CAB reports, five of them on the same subject: the national debt.
Rabie also states that MPs are commonly torn between their desire to serve their constituencies and their desire to maintain links with the executive. In another survey he conducted of parliamentary sessions between 1976 and 1988, he found that only 40 to 47 per cent of the activities of a parliamentary representative focussed on services to his constituency. Such divided loyalties undoubtedly account for parliament's reluctance to take action on the vast amount of financial and bureaucratic corruption noted in the CAB reports.
With regard to other supervisory tools at parliament's disposal, Rabie noted that between 1984-1990, members of parliament directed 1,161 questions to the executive, filed 73 requests for hearings with ministers and 22 motions for open debate, which Rabie describes as more a mode of cooperation between the legislature and executive than a tool for supervision. In addition, he observes that only one parliamentary fact-finding committee was formed during this period, that to investigate the popular housing situation in Alexandria. The two other attempts to form fact-finding committees failed, and no investigatory committees were formed at all.
While the Egyptian Parliament is also empowered to withdraw confidence from the government and to sack a minister, these powers, rarely used in any parliamentary system, were never invoked during the 1984-1990 period, or indeed at any other time covered in this comprehensive and exhaustive study.
Reviewed by Abdel-Khaleq Farouk
