Last minute snags
With its first annual conference just a week away, the ruling NDP is trying to deal with a corruption scandal, an opposition alliance and its own disqualified MPs. Gamal Essam El-Din reports
The tenth of September was not a great day for the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). Just two weeks ahead of its first annual conference, the party found itself facing several rather embarrassing situations at the same time.
On the one hand, a parliamentary committee was deciding whether nearly two dozen MPs who had not done their military service, and had no legal excuse for exemption from it, would have their parliamentary membership annulled. The MPs were all from the NDP.
Also on 10 September, a Cairo Criminal Court sentenced Abdallah Tayel, an NDP heavyweight and former chairman of parliament's economic affairs committee, to 10 years in jail for profiteering, forging official documents, and facilitating the embezzlement of LE262 million.
On that same day, while parliament's economic affairs committee was discussing corruption, and a number of MPs were accusing the NDP-supported government of Prime Minister Atef Ebeid of compelling foreign investors to pay huge bribes and kickbacks to have their projects approved, a public demonstration organised by the leftist Tagammu Party was also calling for Ebeid's government to resign or be forced to resign.
The Tagammu Party also submitted a memorandum to Parliamentary Speaker Fathi Sorour, blaming the deterioration in the living conditions of most Egyptians on the devaluation of the Egyptian pound. Hussein Abdel-Razeq, chairman of Tagammu's political committee, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the decision to devalue the pound was taken at the expense of the poor, and based on instructions from the United States and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). "Leading NDP officials said they would tackle this problem during their next conference," said Abdel-Razeq, "but I doubt they will be able to come up with a solution."
Opposition parties have been having a field day with the NDP's woes. Not only have the NDP's draft-dodging MPs tarnished the image of the People's Assembly, they say, they have also exposed the fact that the ruling party is rife with unqualified and corrupt members. Tayel's conviction has been used to support that claim.
A former chairman of Misr Exterior Bank, the 58- year-old Tayel was a close associate of NDP's parliamentary whip and Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Kamal El-Shazli. El-Shazli placed Tayel on the NDP's list of candidates in the 1995 elections, after which he became an MP. Tayel is also set to face another trial in which he is charged with allegedly embezzling $30 million.
When it reconvenes in mid-November, the People's Assembly is expected to vote for stripping Tayel and the draft-dodging MPs of their parliamentary memberships. This will bring the number of MPs stripped of their parliamentary memberships to a record 22, with at least 19 of them belonging to the NDP.
It took the legislative and constitutional affairs committee three meetings to determine which parliamentarians would be affected by the 17 August Supreme Constitutional Court ruling regarding draft-dodging MPs. Committee Chairman Mohamed Moussa told the Weekly that in line with the ruling, the committee "decided that even if the affected MPs pleaded that the law governing military conscription gave them a licence to run for elections once they had paid a LE500 fine, the ruling must be applied anyway."
Moussa said that of the 21 MPs who had had election appeals filed against them -- contesting the legality of their membership on grounds of their not performing military service -- the committee found that 15 had actually not done their military service. The parliamentary membership of two MPs representing two districts in Sinai, Moussa said, couldn't be revoked because these two MPs had turned 35 (the legal age limit for conscription) while Sinai was still under Israeli occupation.
The committee is expected to look into the cases of the four remaining MPs once the Court of Cassation reaches a decision on whether the elections appeals contesting the validity of their membership for not performing military service are well grounded. When parliament reconvenes for a procedural session during the second week of November, Moussa said, a final report on the affected MPs would be submitted for debate.
