A report on the performance of Parliament for the period from April 11 to May 10

an introduction :

The fourth month of the first session of the first legislative term of the House of Representatives has passed, which witnessed several successive crises that directly affected the street and the Egyptian public opinion, as the developments of the case of the murder of the Italian student Giulio Regeni continued since last February - and the parliament formed a delegation during the period covered by the report He visited the Italian Parliament to explain the circumstances of the accident, passing through the Press Syndicate crisis, and the series of fires in the various governorates of the Republic, and the role of the Representatives during those crises was limited to denouncing and providing urgent statements,

This fourth report comes within the framework of the Maat Foundation for Peace, Development and Human Rights follow-up of the parliamentary performance by monitoring and analysis within the framework of the Foundation’s keenness to build a real legislative institution that can work to realize the dreams of the Egyptian people. The report covers the period from April 11, 2016 to May 10, 2016.

This report is based on an aggregate of what has been published on news sites specialized in parliamentary affairs, as well as statements and interviews of MPs, television and press, and their personal pages on social networking sites.

The report focused on monitoring the legislations approved or discussed by parliament during the period it covers, and the report also monitors the oversight role of parliament on the performance of the state’s executive bodies and the relationship between parliamentarians and executive bodies. The report also displays foreign visits to the parliament and also the parliament’s reception of diplomats from other countries at the official level.

First: The legislative performance of Parliament:

The period covered by the report did not witness the parliament's approval of any of the legislation that an Egyptian citizen hopes to promulgate except for the issuance of the Council's Bylaw Law and the formation of the Council's internal committees.

While Parliament committees discussed many laws and some legal articles about which controversy arose in the previous period, including: -

  • The approval of the Legislative Committee in the House of Representatives on the first paragraph of the amendment of the Public Transfer Law submitted by the government, which stipulates that whoever operates a store that is condemned to be closed, removed, closed, or seized by administrative means, shall be punished with imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months and a fine of not less than two thousand pounds, It does not exceed twenty thousand pounds, or either of these two penalties
  • The House of Representatives Manpower Committee also witnessed a debate during the discussion of the draft civil service law in its meeting, regarding the wording of Article 32 on employee transfer. Whereas some deputies believed that the law must take into account the social dimension and the unity of the family entity when deciding on the transfer so that there is no family in which a man is transferred in a faraway place and his wife in another governorate or vice versa, which threatens family bonds, which is considered a violation of the constitution, and the deputies demanded that they not The transfer shall result in any harm to the employee and the worker financially, and he shall not be transferred to a lower position and his rights shall not be detracted from. Article (32) of the draft government law states that “it is permissible by a decision of the competent authority to transfer the employee from one unit to another if the transfer does not miss his role in the promotion or was based on his request”. The Manpower Committee in the House of Representatives, headed by Jabali Al-Maraghi, finished discussing the civil service law, with 75 articles, while 6 articles related to wages and jobs were not resolved, especially as they are controversial and were not completed until the issuance of this report.
  • Dr. Hussain Issa, head of the House of Representatives ’Plan and Budget Committee, announced that the discussions of the working group that the committee formed from a number of its members would stop the value-added tax bill until the final version of it reaches the Council.
  • The House of Representatives Manpower Committee agreed to extend the union session for a period of 6 months, or until the law on trade union organizations is issued, and to protect the right to organize, in addition to the approval of the second article of the proposed amendment, which provides for the addition of an article that gives the right to those who left the pension after reaching the legal age "60 years" to continue in union work.
  • The approval of the House of Representatives' Committee for Proposals and Complaints to a proposal for a bill on combating cybercrime, submitted by Representative Tamer Al-Shahawi, sparked controversy in political and societal circles, as freedom defenders considered this law a restriction of freedom of expression, while the supporters of the legislature considered it an organization of electronic chaos according to the description of the supporters. Law proposals have been referred to a joint committee of the legislative affairs, communications and information technology committees.
  • Many also considered the approval of the Complaints and Proposals Committee to propose a draft law for reconciliation in construction violations on agricultural lands and refer it to a joint committee of agriculture and local administration and legislative committees, in preparation for solving the urban crisis and a new resource to raise national income this year, as some believe that reconciliation fines can cover a large part In the fiscal deficit balance for the current year.
  • The parliament also witnessed objections from the Nour Party representatives as a result of the speaker referring a bill submitted by 100 deputies calling for the deletion of the paragraph related to contempt of religions from Article 98 of the Penal Code to the Committee for Constitutional and Legislative Affairs.
  • The Council also witnessed the Salafi Nour Party's reintroduction of the Islamic Sukuk bill in Parliament, but this time the party announced that the bill is completely different from the Brotherhood’s project, and completely far from the religious character, which everyone objected to in 2012.

In the same context, the House of Representatives announced that it continued to discuss with it some international agreements signed by the President of the Republic to ratify them, including:

  • Decision of the President of the Arab Republic of Egypt No. 38 of 2016 approving the loan agreement signed in Cairo on 12-22-2015 between the government of the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development regarding the contribution to financing the electrical linkage project between the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
  • Decision of the President of the Arab Republic of Egypt No. 47 of 2016 approving the loan agreement signed in Cairo on 11/16/2015 between the government of the Arab Republic of Egypt and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development regarding the combined cycle gas turbines project in Damanhur.
  • Decision of the President of the Arab Republic of Egypt No. 87 of 2016 regarding the approval of the agreement to establish the joint committee for cooperation between the governments of the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Republic of Malawi in Cairo on 11/14/1999
  • Decision of the President of the Arab Republic of Egypt No. 101 of 2016 approving the governmental agreement signed in Cairo on 6 12 2015 between the government of the Arab Republic of Egypt and the European Investment Bank regarding the power plant with combined cycle gas turbines in Damanhour.
  • Decision of the President of the Arab Republic of Egypt No. 166 of 2016 regarding the approval of a grant agreement to contribute to the response plan to the Syrian refugee crisis in the Arab Republic of Egypt from the grant allocated by the Kuwaiti Fund for a contribution to the response plan to the Syrian refugee crisis in the host countries signed in Cairo on 01/14/2016 between the government The Arab Republic of Egypt and the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development.
  • The Education and Scientific Research Committee in the House of Representatives, headed by Dr. Jamal Shiha, and in the presence of Dr. Ashraf Al Shehi, Minister of Higher Education, approved the Japanese grant to construct and equip a building for outpatient clinics at Abu Al-Rish Hospital at a cost of more than 150 million pounds.

And in a step counted for Parliament, Dr. Ali Abdel-Aal announced the end of the paper system, on May 8, 2016, while the deputies asked for paper copies of the records, numbers from 37 to 50, and said a text: “We finished with the paper management and moved to the electronic administration. As of today, there is no paper with a tablet.”

Second: The oversight role of Parliament

The last period has witnessed some representatives submitting requests for briefing, urgent statements and interrogations to the government, the most important of which were: -

  • MP Abdel-Rahim Ali and MP Mustafa Bakry submitted separate urgent statements to Parliament Speaker Ali Abdel-Al to direct to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, in which he criticized the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’s performance in relation to the killings of Egyptians abroad, demanding that Ambassador Sameh Fahmy, Minister of Foreign Affairs, be summoned to Parliament to ask him about the circumstances of the killing An Egyptian citizen whose body was found with signs of torture in Naples, Italy.
  • MP Sayed Farrag submitted an urgent statement to Dr. Ali Abdel-Al, Speaker of Parliament, to direct him to the Prime Minister and the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Immigration and Egyptians Affairs Abroad, as he requested that the plenary session be allocated to the Parliament to discuss the file of the incidents of killing Egyptian youth abroad, especially since these incidents occurred in Britain and America And Italy, pointing out that there is ambiguity in all the hideous murders that Egyptians were subjected to abroad.
  • Representative Fayeqa Fahim, a member of the House of Representatives, requested a briefing to the Speaker of the House, Dr. Ali Abdel-Al, about the problems of the textile industry, which face many chronic problems that still need radical solutions.
  • Member of Parliament Mustafa Bakri, a member of Parliament, submitted a request for a briefing to the House of Representatives against the Minister of Interior, commenting on the crisis that occurred between the Journalists Syndicate and the Ministry of Interior after the security forces stormed the headquarters of the Journalists Syndicate, in order to find out the reasons that prompted the security forces for this behavior.
  • Deputy Abdel Rahim Ali, for the Dokki and Agouza Department in Giza Governorate, submitted an urgent statement to Dr. Ali Abdel Aal, Speaker of Parliament, regarding the security forces' storming of the Journalists Syndicate headquarters
  • Abdel Hamid Kamal, a member of Parliament, submitted an urgent notification to the Speaker of Parliament, to summon the Prime Minister, to ask him about the incident of storming the Journalists Syndicate.
  • Deputy Mohamed Anwar Sadat, Chairman of the Human Rights Committee in the House of Representatives, asked the Prime Minister and both the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Supply, regarding the delay in receiving the wheat crop from farmers, pointing out that the signs of a new crisis facing the government have loomed recently, which clearly shows in the absence of His plan is clear to receive the crops supplied to the government by the farmers.
  • The two representatives, the journalist Ahmed Badawi, deputy of the Communications and Information Technology Committee, and Osama Heikal, the head of the Parliament's Media Committee, presented an initiative for dialogue under the Parliament between the Council of the Syndicate of Journalists and the Interior, following the recent crisis that erupted following the arrest of two journalists inside the Syndicate.
  • Abeer Hanafi, a member of Parliament, submitted an interrogation request to the Minister of Interior inside Parliament, confirming that what happened as the security forces stormed the Journalists Syndicate, is a transgression that cannot be tolerated, explaining: “The Journalists Syndicate is the Freedom Forum and we will not allow prejudice to the Freedom Law, and today it is black History of the Syndicate of Journalists.
  • Representative Hala Abu Al-Saad, a member of the House of Representatives, requested an urgent notification to the Prime Minister, Eng. Sherif Ismail, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sameh Shoukry, on the human rights situation in Egypt. Representative Abu Al-Saad said in the briefing request that the American organization Human Rights Watch issued a recent report on the human rights situation in Egypt, in which it claimed that the Egyptian government is adopting a zero-tolerance approach to demonstrations, along with other allegations about the human rights situation in Egypt, and the deputy called for the Ministry to speed up the The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is competent to respond to the reports of that organization, by responding to and refuting them.
  • Representative Fawzi Al-Sharbasi, a member of Parliament from the Sherbin district in Dakahlia, submitted an urgent notification request to Dr. Muhammad Mukhtar Jumaa, Minister of Endowments, due to the collapse of a mosque in Dakahlia Governorate, although only 6 years have passed since its establishment.
  • Representative Anisa Hassouna submitted a request to be informed of the Minister of Supply about the fact that some citizens have not yet obtained a smart supply card, due to the slowness of the employees responsible for obtaining the cards.
  • Representative Dr. Anisa Hassouna submitted a briefing request to Dr. Ali Abdel-Al - Speaker of Parliament, addressed to the Prime Minister and Minister of Social Solidarity, regarding the problem of street vendors.
  • MP Haitham Hariri, a member of Parliament, submitted a statement to the Speaker of Parliament, Dr. Ali Abdel-Al, to direct a question to the Minister of Housing about the mechanism for holding citizens accountable for water consumption. And he continued in his statement, for example, if a citizen consumes 50 cubic meters of water per month, then in the past he was charged for the first 10 meters for 230 piasters and then 10 meters after that at 6 pounds, with a total of 40.30 pounds without sanitation at 51% and other expenses, as for the system. What is new is that the citizen is charged for a total of 50 cubic meters according to the highest bracket at a price of 77.5, in addition to 57% sanitation and other expenses.
  • Representative Yasmine Abu Talib submitted a question to Dr. Ali Abdel-Al, Speaker of Parliament, addressed to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Civil Aviation regarding the procedures for securing and inspecting airports.
  • Anisa Hassouna, a member of Parliament, submitted a request for information to the Minister of Electricity, Mohamed Shaker, regarding the increase in the value of electricity bills.
  • Representative Fouad Badrawi, a member of Parliament, submitted a request to Dr. Ali Abdel-Al, Speaker of Parliament, to direct him to Dr. Ahmed Emad El-Din, Minister of Health, due to severe neglect and the lack of medical equipment and devices in public hospitals, especially in the countryside, stressing that the health service has become almost non-existent and the citizen The countryside is suffering terribly.
  • Dr. Mohamed Fouad, a member of the House of Representatives from the Wafd Party, submitted an urgent statement to Dr. Ali Abdel-Al, Speaker of Parliament, addressed to the Minister of Agriculture, regarding the crisis of wheat farmers, demanding in his statement that this request be included in the next session.
  • Representative Khaled Hanafi, a member of the House of Representatives, submitted a request to the Minister of Higher Education, Dr. Ashraf Al-Shehi, regarding the decision to enroll blind students in only five colleges: Arts, Rights, Dar Al Uloom, Social Service, and Al-Alsun. Hanafi said that this decision deprives these students from joining other colleges such as media, economics and political science, which contradicts the text of Articles 53 and 81 of the Constitution.
  • Colonel Ahmed Shuaib, deputy of the third district in Ismailia, submitted a briefing request to the House of Representatives, to summon the Minister of Health to ask him about the deterioration of the health system in Ismailia, and the closure of the medical centers of the Ministry of Health their doors in Jazir at night

Third: Parliament's relationship with the executive and the provision of services.

Members of the House of Representatives continue for the fourth month in a row and despite the formation of the internal committees and their preoccupation with the legislative process and monitoring the performance of the government in providing services to their constituents by submitting direct requests to ministers, governors, district heads and bodies, and during the period covered by the report, Maat monitored many MPs obtaining approvals for Establishing schools and campus furniture, developing roads, raising the efficiency of hospitals, and providing reduced food commodities in agreement with the armed forces system, employing youth, and other services.

In the same context, many MPs held meetings with ministers, governors, heads of life, cities and centers with the aim of discussing matters related to the search for a solution to the crises that their departments are going through, including, for example: -

  • MP Haitham Al-Hariri met with Dr. Muhammad Shaker, Minister of Electricity, to discuss the problems of electricity bills, of which citizens' complaints about the existence of an exaggeration in their value over their average consumption in the past years and months.
  • Attia Moussa met with Dr. Jalal Saeed, Minister of Transport, and reviewed the problem of Catherine Cough Road and Dahab Nuweiba Road, as these roads suffer a complete collapse due to floods, and the Deputy Minister of Transport called for an engineering plan to limit the erosion of these roads.
  • Representative Youssef Al-Shazly of the Watan Future Party obtained approval from the Roads and Bridges Authority, to pave a number of internal roads in Fayoum, which needed to be paved due to their poor condition and the frequent exposure of cars to accidents.

In a related context, the deputies continued to provide in-kind services to the people of their constituency, for example

  • Representative Ahmed Zaidan, of the "Homeland Protectors" party, provided food commodities at reduced prices to the people of his constituency through a member of the district in the Miniat al-Sirj area.
  • Independent Representative Nabil Boulos also submitted three requests to the major service ministries, military production, water resources and irrigation, followed by housing, with the aim of employing a number of citizens.
  • Member of the House of Representatives, Yusra Al-Assiouti, has employed about 400 young men and women since those in some large private companies in various fields.
  • Representative Alaa Wali opened a headquarters to receive requests from the district’s residents to provide social security pensions for widowed women’s sons and daughters in cooperation with the department's social solidarity office.

Fourth: Parliament's foreign relations

  • The Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee received ambassadors from the Netherlands, Chile and Belgium, who expressed their happiness for Egypt's completion of the third step of the Road Map, and indicated that they view Egypt as an essential element in fighting terrorism and providing security even to Europe itself.
  • Dr. Ali Abdel-Al, Speaker of Parliament, received the French Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Jean-Marie Logan, who is visiting Egypt to hold meetings with a number of Egyptian officials.
  • The Egyptian Parliament delegation visited its European counterpart in Strasbourg and held a series of meetings with members of the European Parliament to correct the mental image formed by the policies in Egypt, after what the European Parliament announced last March of its criticism of freedoms and its recommendation to take measures against it with the proposal of the Green Party to cut aid to Egypt, The meetings included a meeting with the Green and Center Party, the Popular Party Group, as well as the Coordinator of the Socialist Parties Group in the Foreign Relations Committee, and then a meeting with the Special Relations Committee for the Levantine Countries of the European Parliament.
  • The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dr. Ali Abdel Aal, at the head of a high-ranking parliamentary delegation, went to deliver a speech at the opening of the new parliamentary session of the African Parliament in South Africa, in addition to the Egyptian delegation's participation in the work of this session, which extended from 3 to 13 May 2016.
  • The Egyptian parliamentary delegation, headed by Major General Hatem Bashat, Chairman of the African Affairs Committee in the Egyptian House of Representatives, and a participant in the African Parliament meetings, in Midrand, Johannesburg, met with a group of members of the Egyptian Association of South Africa. He attended the meeting, which was organized after the end of the sessions of the African Parliament,
  • A Moroccan media delegation consisting of 15 Moroccan media figures visited the parliament to speak with some of the heads of Parliament's committees, and the meeting was attended by Mahmoud Sharif, Deputy House of Representatives, Ambassador Mohamed El-Orabi, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Osama Heikal, Chairman of the Media and Culture Committee.
  • An Egyptian parliamentary delegation headed by Ambassador Mohamed El-Orabi, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and Representatives Marian Azar, Ali Meslehi and Rania Alwani, met with the US House of Representatives delegation headed by the majority leader and head of the Internal Security Committee, in one of the places in Cairo. The Egyptian delegation stressed the need for economic support to Egypt, and considered it a very important and no less important matter than military support. We also discussed the initiation of a Parliamentary Friendship Council between the Egyptian and American Councils.
  • An Egyptian parliamentary delegation participated in the Arab-African Union conference, and the delegation held meetings with officials of the Arab parliaments participating in the conference.

Fifth: Final conclusions

Four months have passed since the first parliamentary session was held and parliamentary committees were formed and the bylaw approved, which led to discipline of work within its corridors after referring draft laws and agreements and succession to them with the aim of discussing and revising them and then presenting them in the plenary session for approval, and despite all this, the Egyptian parliament did not produce until this issuance The report is any of the legislations that the constitution demanded for approval in Articles 235 and 239 241, for example, which is accompanied by popular concern about the delay in issuing legislation that the people hope will be in the interest of the homeland. Especially since this parliament carries over the burden of changing the mental image of previous parliaments, whether it was controlled by the National Democratic Party during the era of former President Muhammad Hosni Mubarak or by the Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of the Brotherhood, which has not happened so far.

The failure of Parliament during the period of crisis to use its role and real monitoring tools to uncover the reality of the crisis and its circumstances and to play the role of governance in it led to a heightened state of anxiety, and the parliament had to deal with the parliament, especially in the developments that accompanied the crisis of the killing of the Italian Regeni, but unfortunately the lack of experience of the representatives made the position of Parliament As a reaction most of the time, that is, it is subject to the influence of the street and the opinion of the general public towards the issues raised, and here we find that Parliament fell into a prisoner of public opinion, which was clearly evident in the crisis of the Journalists Syndicate as the performance of the deputies marred many observations, the most important of which were: -

  • The continuing problem of MPs providing services to the people of their constituencies as a result of the absence of localities, which affects the performance of their legislative role and leads to the absence of some of them from attending important sessions.
  • The deputies ’lack of experience, especially in separating their legislative role and their service performance, as well as the lack of legal and constitutional information for most of them, which leads us to demand that the parliament quickly provide a legal and constitutional support center for the representatives.
  • The continuing phenomenon of the absence of representatives from the public sessions
  • The return of the phenomenon of job applications that parliamentarians request from ministers, which fears the constitution and the Parliament’s regulations, and is an exploitation of parliament’s membership and leads to the deputy’s inability to monitor the performance of ministers
  • MPs' comments on political matters are still inexperienced, which leads to a controversial situation, especially on social media

 

A report on the performance of Parliament for the period from April 11 to May 10

Topics

Share !

RECENTLY ADDED

RELATED CONTENT

القائمة
en_USEnglish