The newly-elected People's Assembly contains more opposition voices than ever, reports Gamal Essam El-Din, and they are determined to be heard President Hosni Mubarak will address a joint session of the newly-elected People's Assembly and the consultative Shura Council on Monday following a five-week election battle marred by violence that claimed 13 lives. Mubarak is expected to outline political and economic reforms, fleshing out with detail presidential campaign promises that constitutional amendments will be introduced to curtail the prerogatives of the presidency, enhance parliament's supervisory role and replace the emergency law with anti-terror legislation. With 12 seats in the 454-seat assembly still to be decided, 441 MPs, including 10 appointed by President Mubarak, took the oath of office on Tuesday. One MP, independent Gamal Zahran, from the Qalioubiya governorate constituency of Shubra Al-Kheima, could not be sworn in because he was abroad. Tuesday's procedural session at the assembly also elected the speaker and his two deputies. The ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) nominated Ahmed Fathi Sorour as speaker. Sorour, who received 413 votes, has held the post since the assassination of Rifaat El-Mahgoub in 1990, making him the longest-serving speaker in modern history. The NDP nominated Zeinab Radwan and Abdel-Aziz Mustafa as the two deputy speakers. Radwan replaces Amal Othman, who won Giza governorate's Doqqi seat, while Mustafa replaces El-Sayed Rashed, chairman of the General Federation of Egyptian Trade Unions (GFETU), who lost his Alexandria governorate seat of Sidi Gaber. A total of 432 members of the outgoing assembly, or 77.5 per cent, lost their seats in the elections that ended on 7 December. The NDP won 311 (71.9 per cent) of the 432 seats contested compared with 388 (87 per cent) in the outgoing assembly and 410 in the assembly of 1995-2000. The ruling party now controls just nine seats more than the 302 required for a two- thirds majority. The NDP hopes that its current total will increase after elections are completed in the six remaining constituencies that will announce their results pending final court rulings. Of the 432 candidates fielded by the NDP only 145 secured election, with 287 falling by the wayside. The Higher Commission for Parliamentary Elections (HCPE), however, subsequently announced that 166 winning independents had subsequently joined NDP ranks to swell the number of its parliamentary seats to 311. In the 2000 elections the NDP won 170 seats though the party's numbers were swelled when 218 winning independents joined its ranks to give it control of 87 per cent of the assembly seats. The results, says Al-Ahram political and parliamentary analyst Amr Hashem Rabie, reflect a serious deterioration in the NDP's popularity and performance. On 12 December President Mubarak exercised his constitutional right by appointing 10 members -- five women and five men -- to the new assembly. Of the appointees four -- three women and one man -- are Copts, raising the number of Christians in the house to five, compared with seven in the outgoing assembly, and the number of women to six, compared with the previous assembly's 11. Six of the appointees were former appointed MPs. The appointed members are: Adviser to President Mubarak Mohamed Dakrouri; member of the NDP's political politburo and former chairman of Al-Azhar University Ahmed Omar Hashem; lawyer Edward Ghali El-Dahabi; former chairman of Zagazig University and professor of constitutional law Ramzi El-Shaer; assistant to Justice Minister Iskandar Ghattas; former dean of Cairo University's Faculty of Arab and Islamic Studies Zeinab Radwan; member of the National Council for Women Georgette Sobhi; chairman of the Public Notary Authority Ibtessam Habib; sociologist Siadah Ilhami and chairman of the Petrochemical Holding Company Sanaa El-Banna. Differences over who should occupy leading positions in the assembly have been simmering within the NDP for a week and the selection of Radwan and Mustafa as the speaker's two deputies is seen by many as a significant move. Radwan was chosen over former deputy speaker Amal Othman because she is deemed more capable of responding to Islamic questions that might be raised by Muslim Brotherhood MPs than her predecessor whose re-election in Doqqi is widely assumed to have been due more to government help than popularity. Radwan received just 320 out of a possible 417 votes, with Muslim Brotherhood MPs abstaining. Mustafa, who has held his seat since 1970, is now the assembly's oldest member. Though nominally a workers' representative, an administrative court order in the 2000 elections judged that Mustafa, a former chairman of Misr Insurance Company, should stand as a fe'at (professional) candidate. Mustafa faced stiff competition from Ali Fathi El-Bab, the Muslim Brotherhood deputy for the South Cairo district of Helwan, who obtained 128 votes compared to Mustafa's 289. Radwan and Mustafa's margins of victory indicate fissures in the NDP's monopoly of parliamentary life. In previous parliaments NDP candidates have secured 400-plus votes. Differences have also emerged over the selection of the chairmen of 19 parliamentary committees. While Mustafa El-Feki, NDP representative for the Delta city of Damanhour, and presidential appointee Ramzi El-Shaer, are guaranteed the chairmanship of the foreign relations and constitutional and legislative affairs committees respectively, the NDP has yet to decide on its nominees for the remaining 17 committees. As a result the chairmanship elections have been rescheduled from last Tuesday to 24 December. The election results were an unmitigated disaster for the four major opposition parties. They fielded 300 candidates but won just nine seats. Six seats went to the liberal Wafd Party; two to the leftist Tagammu and one to Al-Ghad Party, leaving the new assembly polarised between the NDP and independent MPs affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood. More than 4,500 independents contested seats of whom 112 emerged victorious compared with 42 in 2000. The independents include 88 members of the Muslim Brotherhood (20 per cent), plus 24 MPs with leftist, nationalist, Nasserist or liberal leanings. Some of these, including Mustafa Bakri, editor of the nationalist firebrand Al-Osbou, belong to the United National Front for Change (UNFC). The Brotherhood is now the major opposition force in the new parliament, and its MPs seemed determined to flex their muscles during Tuesday's procedural session. Not only did they not vote for Radwan or Mustafa, they are also competing for the chairmanship of parliamentary committees. Three MB spokesmen -- Saad El-Katatni (Al-Minya), Saad El-Husseini (Beni Sweif), and Hamdi Hassan (Alexandria) -- met speaker Sorour on Tuesday to request that MB MPs take leading positions in several parliamentary committees, in particular the religious, education and culture committees. The MB's committee aspirations, Rabie told Al-Ahram Weekly, show that the group is focussing more on religious and educational issues than on political and economic policy. "The Brotherhood," said Rabie, "believes there is an American conspiracy against educational and Islamic curriculums and that they should capitalise on their membership in parliament to fight this conspiracy." It is a stand, Rabie believes, that could kill any hope that a strong opposition voice will be raised in support of political reform. The Brotherhood has promised that it will coordinate with UNFC in the new parliament, making political reform their main priority. Helmi El-Gazzar, a leading member of the Brotherhood in Giza, told the Weekly that the group's attempt to dominate the three parliamentary committees does not mean that it is abandoning its commitment to political reform. "The fact that the Brotherhood is the largest opposition bloc gives it the right to compete for the chairmanship of committees," said El-Gazzar. "But the Brotherhood also promised it will coordinate with the UNFC to press for greater political and constitutional reforms and we are more than eager to keep this promise."
