Egypt’s first post-revolution People’s Assembly (PA) was barely 152 days in office when a Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) decision ruled that the elections that
Egypt’s first post-revolution People’s Assembly (PA) was barely 152 days in office when a Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) decision ruled that the elections that voted it in were unconstitutional, and dissolved it.
Elections for a new PA, the lower house of Egypt’s parliament, are preliminarily scheduled for next October.
The PA contained an Islamist majority that had won a sweeping victory, a first in Egypt’s legislative council history. This fact especially makes it important to attempt an assessment of the performance of the 152-day parliament.
Islamic oath
Even before they embarked on their legislative assignment, Islamist MPs insisted on flaunting their Islamist loyalties. On taking oath, several of them added the clause “as long as it does not violate the sharia of Allah” to the constitutional oath. Even when they were warned that such an act was not constitutional, they insisted on going their own way.
What first meets the eye when looking into the performance of the dissolved PA is that the prime Islamist focus was to take over all the authorities in order to implement their own project, regardless of any national agenda. They thus brewed conflict with the other political parties and movements, as well as with the judiciary and the government, no matter the political embarrassment that this entailed.
With the very first parliamentary sessions, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), and the Salafi al-Nur Party, monopolised the leadership of all the parliamentary committees, deliberately disregarding all the other political parties in the Parliament. And, even though they alienated the movements which represented the 25 January 2011 Revolution, the Islamists insisted they were Revolution Parliament.
It was all too obvious from the beginning that the Parliamentary Speaker, Saad al-Katatni, himself a prominent MB, favoured the Islamist MPs or those who endorsed the MB and Salafi agendas, whereas he purposefully marginalised and even threatened secular MPs.
Public criticism
The post-revolution PA was criticised so profusely in the media and by the public that, after 100 days of its inauguration it published a booklet on its most prominent activities and achievements. The statistics in the booklet cite 83 ordinary PA sessions; one extraordinary session in the wake of the Port Said stadium event in which some 73 lost their lives and 150 were injured; and three sessions held jointly with the Shura Council, the upper house of Parliament, to elect the members of the Constituent Assembly tasked with writing Egypt’s new constitution.
The parliamentary committees issued some 523 reports during those 100 days. Among them were reports concerning compensation for the families of those who died during the revolutionary protests and those who were injured, as well as the strict application of prison regulations to prisoners who had been members of the previous regime. Some 169 interpellations were presented by MPs, but did not get a chance to be discussed. The parliamentary committees formed fact-finding committees to investigate, among other issues, the killing and injuring of demonstrators; the Port Said incidents; and recovering Egyptian money that had been allegedly smuggled abroad by members of the previous regime.
Creating crises
Looking into the PA’s legislative activities, the booklet cited 13 laws passed and 242 bills presented by MPs. The laws concerned the official compensation to the families of victims of the revolution; offering temporary workers in the public sector long term contracts; election process procedures; banning the trial of civilians before military courts; professional syndicate regulations, citizenship and medical insurance for mothers who are family breadwinners; regulations concerning the police force; minimum and maximum wage; and medical insurance for infants.
The booklet marked 911 questions that were addressed by MPs to the government, 8118 requests and 416 urgent declarations.
The PA regularly created crises around all the political and revolutionary movements. It insulted and abused the Ganzouri government—which was appointed as an interim government by the Military Council (MC) and could thus only be removed by the MC, and attempted to withdraw confidence from the Cabinet to the point where ministers stopped attending the PA sessions.
Clashing with the judiciary
Islamists clashed with the SCC when a Salafi MP presented a bill to amend the SCC law so that the members of its panel should be elected rather than appointed by the president, and so that its functions in monitoring the laws passed by Parliament should be reduced.
Islamist MPs also suggested that, in case the SCC issued a ruling that nullified the elections that brought about the upper and lower houses of Parliament, the ruling should not be binding.
They presented a bill to pardon political crimes that were committed during the period from 1976 to 2011. The government and the liberal MPs voted against the law on the grounds that it would hold very serious repercussions against national security.
The most flagrant of the Parliament’s tailored bills was the disenfranchisement law, which was explicitly tailored to ban first General Omar Suleiman and then Lieutenant General Ahmed Shafik from running for presidential elections on the grounds that they were fuloul, remnants of the old regime. This law was passed, but was later ruled unconstitutional by the SCC.
The PA also collided with al-Azhar, the Cairo-based, topmost institution of Sunni Islam in the world, when MPs presented a bill to ban it from being the definitive reference on religious questions and to have its Grand Imam elected, not appointed by the president.
Rejecting non-discrimination
A bill to incriminate the instigation of hatred was rejected by the parliamentary committees concerned, as was the bill for a unified law for places of worship.
The biggest challenge that faced the PA was to form the constituent assembly that would write Egypt’s new constitution. A long time was wasted in forming a constituent assembly that consisted of 78 per cent members of the MB, Salafis and Islamic groups, turning a deaf ear to the need for representation of all sectors of the community. The assembly was contested before the SCC and was ruled invalid. A new assembly was formed, again by the Islamist-majority PA, and again with an Islamist majority which failed to gain the approval of many political forces. It is now contested before the court.
The PA has rejected the ruling of the Supreme Constitutional Court to dissolve it. The Speaker of Parliament, Dr Saad al-Katatni, defied the ruling and called for holding parliamentary sessions on their scheduled dates. MPs said that if they failed to hold their sessions in the parliament, they would hold them in Tahrir Square. Many MPs started to gather at the door of the parliament but were prevented from entering by the security forces.
Police with beards
Other MPs spawned a problem concerning the right of police and army officers to grow their beards. The Salafi front vowed to formulate new laws to allow for this, regardless of the fact that these apparatuses are sensitive to the ban on personnel displaying religious affiliations.
The parliamentary sessions included many provocative suggestions, such as the Salafi MP who demanded a ban on the teaching of English on the grounds that the US is a country of apostasy.
News circulated of a bill that would allow a husband to have intercourse with his dead wife, provided it was done during the first six hours following her death. This bill, known as the ‘farewell intercourse’, not only caused a local stir but was also an international embarrassment for Egypt.
Other MPs called for the amendment of the law of visitation rights for divorcees and the decrease of the age of custody for the children. A bill was also presented to allow the practice of female circumcision, which was banned by the former regime.
In addition, MPs committed several ethical violations. The most infamous of them all was the ‘nose case’, in which a Salafi MP was granted a parliamentary loan and spent it on a rhinoplasty procedure (nose job), and then claimed that his facial injuries were the results of an attempted carjacking and robbery. Another MP was charged with ‘indecent behaviour’ after being caught in a car parked on the side of a lonely road at night with a young woman, who he claimed was his ‘niece’ who had fainted and whom he was trying to resuscitate.
Sad reality
Secular MPs of the dissolved PA were, predictably, critical of its performance. Mohamed Abu-Hamed, deputy cofounder of Hayat al-Misriyeen (the Life of the Egyptians) party, said those who had hoped for a true revolutionary parliament were disappointed by the sad reality of its disgraceful performance. He criticised the behaviour of the parliamentary majority and their insistence on maintaining the majority of the constituent assembly, despite all attempts to explain to them that parliamentary majority and writing the constitution are incompatible.
Magda al-Neweishi, a member of the liberal al-Wafd party, apologised to the Egyptian people because the PA failed to come up with solutions to their problems. She blamed the failure on the squabbles between the majority and the opposition, the government and the MC; the general atmosphere reflected negatively on the performance of the PA. Ms Neweishi focused on the inequity against the opposition and the double standards applied with respect to the majority and the opposition.
Judge Amir Ramzy, a member of the Cabinet-appointed National Justice Committee, said the real problem with the PA was that the Islamists, who held a 77 per cent majority, saw in it an opportunity to achieve their Islamist goals. The result was that the pubic became dissatisfied with the PA performance, especially after the MPs’ ethical violations and the fights during the sessions. As many MPs sought nothing but retaliation against the old regime, they failed to set rules and laws that would serve the Egyptian man-in-the-street and solve his basic problems such as education and lawlessness.
WATANI International
8 July 2012