Resignation with a difference

An MP set a new precedent last week by deciding to resign from parliament due to his despair at the stagnation of political life. Gamal Essam El-Din reports

---

Hassanein

On 6 April, the People's Assembly overwhelmingly approved the resignation of Mohamed Farid Hassanein, a maverick independent member of parliament representing the Toukh district in the Delta governorate of Qalyubiya. Although Hassanein is not the first MP to resign from the current People's Assembly -- Egypt's lower house of parliament -- the reasons for his decision are wholly unprecedented.

In fact, over the last four years the People's Assembly has accepted the resignation of as many as 15 MPs. However, their resignations were submitted after they were found guilty of dodging their obligatory military service. These MPs were pressured by the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), to which they belonged, to submit their resignations rather than have their membership annulled by the Assembly.

Unlike the draft-dodgers, Hassanein surprised the Assembly on 5 April by arguing that his resignation was largely due to "a deep disappointment with Egypt's political life". He said: "I was filled with despair when I found that political reform in Egypt has reached a deadlock and that political parties have lost any hope of getting Egypt out of its current political stagnation."

Seeking to achieve his objective of reviving political life, Hassanein switched his partisan allegiances three times in the last three years. In 2000, Hassanein won Toukh's parliamentary seat as a member of the liberal Wafd Party. Three months later, in March 2001, Hassanein left the Wafd in favour of becoming an independent MP. However, in November 2003, he again switched allegiances by becoming the parliamentary speaker for the Arab Nasserist Party. He abandoned the Nasserist Party five months later following a dispute over his decision to approve an Egyptian parliamentary delegation visit to Israel to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

Hassanein decided last month to join a new party called Egypt Tomorrow. The party, led by independent, ex-Wafdist MP Ayman Nour, is aimed at turning Egypt into a liberal democracy with a market economy. As the Egypt Tomorrow Party was rejected by the Political Parties Committee two weeks ago, Hassanein's resignation drew closer.

According to Hassanein, his three-year membership of the People's Assembly and of three different parties led him to conclude that "there is no hope in reforming Egypt politically". He said: "I promised my constitutents that I would do my best to use parliament as a forum for conveying their grievances and finding solutions to chronic problems such as unemployment. Deplorably enough, I failed to live up to their expectations." Hassanein said his decision to resign is irreversible and that he is "contemplating the idea of migrating to Europe and pursuing opposition to Egypt's political conditions from there".

Hassanein's political record is not confined to parliamentary life. As a student in Cairo University, he led campus demonstrations in protest at the June 1967 defeat. According to Hassanein, he met with late President Anwar El-Sadat, whose position at that time was speaker of the Assembly, and presented to him a petition regarding what should be done in the post-1967 defeat period. Later, Hassanein joined late President Gamal Abdel-Nasser's one party organisation, the Arab Socialist Union.

Parliamentary Speaker Fathi Sorour said he did his best to urge Hassanein to scrap his resignation decision. "I hope his colleagues will do their best to dissuade him from resigning," Sorour said. Mounir Fakhri Abdel-Mounir, a Wafdist, suggested giving Hassanein a two- week grace period. Less than 24 hours later, however, Sorour said the Assembly's Steering Office had approved Hassanein's resignation after it had found out that it was submitted out of "personal conviction".

Observers, however, believe that the Assembly's quick decision to accept Hassanein's resignation was not without strong reasons. He has been a major source of trouble for parliament and Sorour in particular.

In January 2003, Hassanein irritated Sorour by showering MPs with hundreds of copies of what he titled "An urgent letter to President Hosni Mubarak". In the letter, Hassanein urged Mubarak to fire Sorour and Prime Minister Atef Ebeid and to replace them with people who are more honest and more devoted to working towards the nation's interests.

Shortly afterwards, Hassanein and Hamdeen Sabahi, another Nasserist MP, were arrested and placed in custody by security forces, in violation of their parliamentary immunity. The Interior Ministry said it had to invoke Article 99 of the Constitution to arrest Hassanein and Sabahi and bring them under investigation by the state prosecution. The article states MPs are liable to be arrested when they are caught red-handed committing a crime.

Hassanein told Al-Ahram Weekly that the first time he contemplated the idea of resigning from the People's Assembly was following his arrest for participating in demonstrations against the US invasion of Iraq. Hassanein said he and his colleague Sabahi were severely beaten by police -- indeed, to the extent that he needed hospital treatment. "This arrest made me feel that my parliamentary membership is rather futile. I thought of resigning from the Assembly and going into self-imposed exile in Germany," he said.

Other reasons cited by Hassanein for his resignation include rampant corruption, lack of enthusiasm for change and reform, and the impotence of Ebeid's government.

Hassanein is a 65-year-old businessman with investments in industrial projects in the 10th of Ramadan city.