Calm before the storm?
Last week's parliamentary procedural meetings featured the resignation of a record number of MPs, and sharp attacks against the government
The three-year-old "draft-dodging MPs" saga came to an official end last week. During two procedural meetings, the People's Assembly ended up stripping 16 MPs of their parliamentary membership for dodging military service, reports Gamal Essam El-Din. Whereas it had been expected that 15 MPs fell into that category, Hosni Bihalou, a National Democratic Party (NDP) MP from Qalubiya, was a last minute addition to the list.
The Assembly also revoked the membership of Abdallah Tayel, a business tycoon and the former chairman of parliament's economic committee, after he was sentenced to ten years in jail. A parliamentary report said Tayel's membership was annulled on the grounds of loss of confidence and breach of trust. Tayel was found guilty of profiteering, forging official documents and facilitating the embezzlement of state funds.
Two other MPs -- Tamer Tayie from Giza and Mahmoud Abbas from Alexandria -- passed away during the summer recess, thus bringing the total number of by-elections that have to be held to fill the assembly's vacant seats to 19.
The Shura Council, meanwhile, also decided to strip the NDP's Farag El-Rawas, a businessman and council member, of his membership for not doing his military service as well.
Although dramatic and unprecedented, the removal of the draft-dodging MPs was a relatively smooth affair, mainly because all the draft-dodgers had been compelled by NDP parliamentary whip Kamal El-Shazli to submit their resignations. The opposition labelled this tactic both undemocratic and unconstitutional. Wafd Party speaker Mounir Fakhri Abdel-Nour argued that the ruling handed down by the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) on 17 August regarding the draft dodgers clearly stated that the Assembly "must strip the draft-dodgers of their membership, rather than accept their resignations".
El-Shazli had made no secret of the deal he made with the MPs: that in exchange for their resignations, the party would provide the opportunity for their children or relatives to run in the by- elections for their seats. According to Abdel-Nour, this would only open up the by-election process to further legal disputes and appeals. Abdel-Nour told Al-Ahram Weekly that rather than punishing its deputies for their dodgy practices, the NDP was rewarding them. "The NDP's new style of thinking is a mess," said Abdel-Nour, "because this [kind of] reward reflects a purely old" way of doing things.
The NDP did not take Abdel-Nour's comments lightly. Assembly Speaker Fathi Sorour said the draft-dodgers' resignations were constitutional "because they are in line with Article 97, which states that the People's Assembly alone may accept the resignation of its members." Abdel-Radi Gaber, one of the draft-dodgers, said that he and his colleagues were legally elected, and that the decision to resign was taken of their own free will.
The procedural meetings also witnessed an unusually harsh round of criticism against the government. Abdel-Nour accused the government of transforming a great many strategic laws -- including those dealing with mortgages and regulating the performance of the Central Bank -- into "mere ink on paper".
According to Abdel-Nour, "the government's failure to implement these laws is a snub to the Assembly and its dignity, showing the government's indifference to the hardships people are facing as a result of the dramatic rise in the prices of food and services and the dollarisation of the economy."
Abdel-Nour said, "speeding up the implementation of the new Central Bank law was a necessity, but the government has since stopped short of taking any concrete steps towards addressing these national concerns."
Maverick MP Mohamed Farid Hassanein, recently appointed the official parliamentary spokesman of the Nasserist Party, joined forces with Abdel-Nour to argue that "the awful situation the Egyptian people are now in is primarily the result of poor performance by a series of bad governments." Improving this situation, said Hassanein, "requires radical change aimed at uprooting corruption, fighting despotic rulers and thwarting foreign pressure".
Hassanein found himself on thin ice last year after submitting an urgent letter to President Hosni Mubarak claiming that Sorour had turned the Assembly into a toothless body.
According to El-Shazli, who is also the minister of state for parliamentary affairs, it took the government a long time to implement the Central Bank law "because it unifies several laws into one, and thus its executive regulations require a great deal of effort."
Prime Minister Atef Ebeid, meanwhile, said the government is always ready to listen to opposition MPs. Addressing the Shura Council on 12 November, Ebeid said his government's two major priorities are raising citizens' living standards and curbing the country's runaway population boom. "To achieve these objectives, the government will seek out the advice of all civil society organisations. We strongly believe that these organisations can play a cardinal role in fighting poverty and protecting limited-income classes from the scourge of liberalisation and market economy policies."
The severity of the economic crisis, meanwhile, has already catalysed the opposition's submission of 30 interpellations (questions that must be answered by cabinet ministers) directed at Ebeid (a total of 33 were submitted last session).
Independent MP Ayman Nour alone has submitted eight interpellations on subjects ranging from the dollarisation of the economy to bad loans, and the selling of Egyptian sovereign eurobonds to Israeli investors to contracting European companies to collect Cairenes' trash.
Like Hassanein, Nour found himself in a precarious position last year after submitting a controversial interpellation claiming that mental disorders and psychological trauma had become rampant as a direct result of the country's economic crisis. "Four years of poor policies by Atef Ebeid's government have resulted in at least 25 per cent of the Egyptian population being stricken by mental disorders," Nour alleged.
