The House of Representatives will begin reviewing nearly 340 laws starting on Sunday.
Laws will be passed by majority vote, through distribution over internal parliament committees, after they were assigned for an early revision.
The discussions will not be open to the public, since the parliamentary sessions were banned from being televised last week. However, Parliamentary Speaker Ali Abdel Aal announced that sessions will be broadcast live again after the laws are reviewed, state media reported Friday.
The constitution stipulates that the parliament 15 days to review presidential decrees and governmental regulations invested with the full force of law that were issued during within its absence, since the adoption of the constitution on 18 January 2014. These include laws passed by the executive power under former interim president Adly Mansour and current President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.
According to MPs, the Civil Services Law was rejected by the Manpower Committee, but this does not necessary mean the whole parliament will reject it.
Generally, it is expected that all laws will be preliminarily approved, and that the MPs will discuss the laws later, to which different committees had objections, which they communicated in the form of recommendations.
Nineteen committees were formed in total, distributed at random until new committees are later elected. MPs revealed that the laws they discussed over the past days did not really relate to the committees’ specialisations.
One member of the human rights committee, Atef Makhalif, told Daily News Egypt Saturday that they were assigned seven laws. “We expressed our objection to the laws, which we thought were unrelated to human rights,” he said. “With the exception of the child rights bill, most laws were related to pensions and bonuses.”
Makhalif is a member of the Free Egyptians Party and will run for a place in the human rights committee when committees are elected after passing the new code of conduct. He also claimed that head of the Reform and Construction Party Mohamed Anwar Sadat aspires for the presidency of the committee.
Sadat confirmed to Daily News Egypt his intention to run for the position and assured that he had a meticulous plan with priorities, especially when related to protest rights, terrorism, and pre-trial detention.
“As for the laws we discussed to be presented before the parliament Sunday and Monday, they have been distributed almost randomly to all committees, which serve more as general technical committees during this period,” Sadat said.
Moreover, current committee secretary Sherif Al-Wardani told Daily News Egypt that he indented to run for the position officially.
Makhalif said he hopes the Protest Law would be among the laws the committees discuss, as well as the laws on counter-terrorism. “I believe the law organising protests must be revised and amended if it contains any constitutional defects,” he said.
Secretary of the Youth Committee Ahmed Zidan reiterated, in statements to Daily News Egypt, similar comments over the lack of correlation between the laws assigned to the committee and its specialisation.
“We discussed laws related to traffic and the banning of tuktuks,” Zidan said, explaining that one of the main reasons behind discussing the seven laws that are unrelated to the youth comes from the absence of issued laws related to youth.
Zidan, a member of Guardians of a Nation Party, sees that youth affairs are closely connected to sports affairs in Egypt, but as a graduate of economics and political science, he insisted there was more to it.
“There are many projects related to training the youth, whether in the field of sports or culture, but also in job opportunities, which should be enhanced with the coordination of the private sector,” Zidan said.
Zidan will run for the position of secretary of the Youth Committee once the door opens for the election of committee heads and secretaries. “I will face major competition with sport stars,” he said.
In this regard, he highlighted the names of Ahmed Mortada Mansour, son of the president of the Al-Zamalek SC, and national swimming record holder Rania Elwani, as potential candidates for the position.
He further mentioned that among the candidates for the presidency of the committee are businessman Mohamed Farag Amer, Chairman of Faragalla Food Industries, and Dean of the Faculty of Sports at Sadat University Hamdy El-Sisi.
According to Zidan, it is not necessary that the committee is headed by a “young” member as long as the person is competent in addressing youth issues.
