The particulars of proposed political reform were being hammered out this week by both the national dialogue and the People's Assembly. Gamal Essam El-Din reports Revising the political parties law has long been a key opposition demand. The law has been blamed for both the stagnation of Egyptian political life, as well as the public's dissatisfaction with party politics as a whole. The current law requires would-be political parties to be approved by a seven-member committee; over the past 25 years however the committee has rejected more than 50 requests to establish parties. In most cases, the committee has argued the new parties were too similar to previously existing ones. Only in the last six months were two new parties finally granted approval, bringing the country's total number of legal political parties to 19. While most opposition figures want the law completely scrapped, a compromise of sorts was reached at the fifth round of national dialogue meetings that took place last Saturday. Several proposed amendments to the law can now be presented to President Hosni Mubarak before going through a rewriting and approval process involving the Justice Ministry, Shura Council and the People's Assembly. The first of the proposed changes will require those wanting to form a party to obtain 1,000 signatures, rather than the currently stipulated 50. Another will change the make-up of the committee that approves party applications. Further amendments are concerned with party mouthpieces, and government subsidies for political parties. The signature clause became a major issue when Al-Ghad Party Chairman Ayman Nour was accused -- earlier this year -- of forging the thousands of the signatures he used to get approval for his new party. Nour is currently awaiting trial; he has argued that there would have been no point in forging so many signatures considering the committee only requires 50. Nour blamed Wafd Party Chairman Noman Gomaa for the new amendment, which many opposition figures believe will form an even greater hindrance to party politics. In fact, Nour described this and the other suggested amendments as "cosmetic"; they will "not result in any essential restructuring of political life", he said. The Al-Ghad Party chairman was a member of the Wafd until March 2001, when he left after disagreements with Gomaa. As for the re-structuring of the Political Parties Committee, the national dialogue's suggested including a number of public figures on the committee. The speaker of the Shura Council currently heads the committee, which counts as members the ministers of interior, justice and parliamentary affairs, as well as three former judges. If the amendment goes through, the committee would instead be made up of the Shura Council speaker, the ministers of interior and parliamentary affairs, three judges, and three independent public figures. "This," said Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal El-Shazli, "means that the justice minister will no longer be a member of the committee, while the president of the republic will be authorised to select the three independent public figures." Leftist Tagammu Party Chairman Rifaat El-Said told Al-Ahram Weekly that he would have wanted the committee to be scrapped altogether, but "the new amendment is better than nothing, because it makes the process of vetting political parties fairer." Many opposition figures also object to the fact that the speaker of the Shura Council, Safwat El- Sherif, is also the ruling National Democratic Party's secretary-general. The fact that El-Sherif is thus the head of the Political Parties Committee represents a clear-cut conflict of interest, they say. Another proposed amendment provides parties with the right to issue two newspapers; although this may at first appear to be a liberalising clause, the current law does not actually stipulate a limit to the number of newspapers a party may establish. Informed sources told the Weekly that the new restriction was meant to curb the trend by which some parties have licensed out their newspapers to other, often outlawed political forces. Some sighted the Liberal Party's Afaq Arabia (Arab Horizons) newspaper, which is widely considered "the voice of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group rather than the voice of the Liberal Party itself." One source alleged that the Liberal Party received money from the Brotherhood in exchange for allowing the group to use its newspaper concession. The new restriction, El-Shazli said, would require parties and their mouthpieces to reflect similar ideological and political orientations. He also claimed that the new amendment would grant parties equal access to the state-owned media. The final amendment, concerning government grants to political parties, is aimed at foiling alleged foreign attempts to fund political activity in Egypt, especially in light of a recent $1 million US grant to six Egyptian NGOs to monitor elections and perform other political tasks. Clearly worried that the US's next step would be to attempt to directly fund political parties, the government has proposed subsidising all political parties to the tune of LE100,000 per party per year. "This amount can go up to a maximum of LE600,000," El-Shazli said, "depending on how many MPs a party has in parliament." Political parties currently obtain a government subsidy of LE50,000 a year. While smaller parties with limited funds welcomed the move, larger entities like Al-Wafd said they preferred to depend on members' donations and revenues from the sales of their party newspaper. "This does not mean that Al-Wafd disclaims parties that accept government subsidies," Gomaa said. (see commentary by Salama A. Salama, p.15) Taking the devil out of the details The People's Assembly and Shura Council's second stage of debates about President Hosni Mubarak's 26 February call to amend Article 76 of the constitution -- to allow multi-candidate presidential elections -- drew to a close this week. At a series of five sessions, a mix of constitutional law professors, syndicate chairmen, opposition leaders, former senior government officials and representatives of civil society organisations presented their recommendations on how Mubarak's call should be applied. Assembly Speaker Fathi Sorour told parliamentary correspondents on Monday that the assembly would launch a third stage of hearings beginning Saturday. "This stage," Sorour said, "will focus on proposals presented by MPs on how Article 76 should be applied." Twenty-two proposals have been submitted by MPs since 9 April. The final details of the proposed amendment will then be hammered out before it is submitted to the assembly for a vote on 10 May. "If two-thirds of MPs approve it," Sorour said, "the final stage involves the proposed amendment being put up for a public referendum." This week's debates focussed on whether the elections should take place in just one day, whether presidential hopefuls need to get the backing of a quorum of elected MPs and municipal councils members, and the particulars of the commission which will oversee the elections itself. A clear division emerged between the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) and the opposition at Monday's Legislative Committee hearing session, where NDP Assistant Secretary-General Kamal El-Shazli said presidential hopefuls should have to get the backing of 120 elected members in municipal councils in 12 governorates. "This means that a presidential hopeful will have to obtain the support of 10 elected members in each of the required 12 governorates," El-Shazli said. The NDP also strongly recommends that presidential hopefuls obtain the backing of "a reasonable number of elected MPs in the People's Assembly and Shura Council." El-Shazli abstained from providing an exact number, but said the assembly's Legislative Committee would hammer this detail out. Although those were the conditions for independent presidential hopefuls, El-Shazli said, "with political parties the NDP believes that each party should be allowed to nominate candidates for the presidential elections, provided the party has an elected MP in either the People's Assembly or the Shura Council." Opposition leaders were critical of the NDP's terms, arguing they are highly restrictive, and geared in favour of the ruling party. Liberal Wafd Party leader Noman Gomaa said presidential hopefuls should not need the support of elected MPs or members of municipal councils. Gomaa said Al-Wafd believes it is quite enough for a presidential hopeful to obtain the support of 100,000 voters to be eligible to run. Instead, Gomaa proposed another restriction on presidential hopefuls, suggesting that candidates must belong to parties that are more than five years old -- in a clear thrust at Ayman Nour, leader of Al-Ghad (Tomorrow) Party, which has only been in existence for less than six months. "This restriction is aimed at ensuring that presidential candidates have considerable political experience," Gomaa said. Leftist Tagammu Party Chairman Rifaat El-Said said candidates should only need the support of 50,000 voters rather than a certain number of MPs. Opposition party leaders agree that the NDP's elected MPs quorum stipulation would void Mubarak's proposal of any meaning, given that parliament and local councils are packed with members of the ruling party. The NDP is also of the view that the presidential elections should be held on a single day, some among the opposition object on the grounds that there are not enough judges to place all polling stations under judicial supervision on the same day. Since there are only 6,000 judges, El- Shazli said, and over 35,000 polling stations (all but 200-250 being auxiliary rather than principal polling stations), it was impossible for all the stations to be placed under full judicial control. Both the Tagammu and Wafd parties agree that the elections can take place in just one day. In June 2000, however, the Supreme Constitutional Court ruled that the 1990 parliamentary elections were unconstitutional because they were not placed under full judicial supervision. "The lack of judges," the court said, "is not a good enough reason because elections can take place on more than one day." The NDP, meanwhile, wants the commission overseeing presidential elections to include a mix of judicial and public figures. El-Shazli said this is the rule in France where "the Constitutional Council" supervising the elections is composed of both judicial and public figures. Gomaa urged that six judges from the Cassation Court and five from the Supreme Administrative Court be entrusted with overseeing the presidential elections. Tagammu and Al-Ghad Party leaders supported a purely judicial commission. Over 1,000 judges demanded full control over presidential elections and asked for reforms of the judiciary authority law this week (see accompanying story). Here, again, Gomaa took a jab at Nour, demanding that the judicial commission be empowered with rejecting candidates if they are found guilty of receiving foreign funding. Nour's party has been fighting persistent rumours of US connections. Gomaa's party recently embarked upon a fierce campaign attacking US funding of NGO-supported political activities. In general, El-Shazli said, presidential hopefuls needed to be Egyptian (without dual nationality, and having performed military service), over 40 years old, and have no criminal record. Candidates will also be strictly banned from receiving foreign funding.
