The House of Representatives will review Sunday 32 presidential decrees and governmental regulations invested with the full force of law that were issued during within its absence, among a total of 340 laws, state-media reported Sunday.
The electronic voting system is expected to be implemented in Sunday’s session and a total of 596 will be voting on passing or rejecting the presented laws. The laws scheduled for discussion in the parliament Sunday include issues related to national security and laws organising political rights. Some have been sources of public controversy.
Three laws organising political rights were issued to systematise presidential and parliamentary elections: the political rights’ law, the parliamentary law, and the division of constituencies’ law.
The latter was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Constitutional Court in March 2015, leading to a delay of parliamentary elections for almost eight months. The parliamentary law was also contested by politicians over the parliamentary division, which allocated 80% of the seats to be elected individual-system, while only 20% were elected through the list-system.
Political parties had also objected the closed-list system and called for proportional representation. Their argument had been that the current division weakened political parties and enhanced the influence of political funding.
The three laws were assigned to the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee in parliament, headed by Bahaa El-Din Abu Shoka, the oldest MP who administered the first session before the election of Ali Abdel Aal as parliamentary speaker. The committee was composed of 38 members.
MP Mohamed Salah, secretary of the committee, said the committee was assigned 34 laws. “We passed them all without recommendations for amendments later, but only some of the laws should be discussed in Sunday’s session,” Salah told Daily News Egypt ahead of the session.
He explained that currently, there will be no amendments to any law whatsoever. “It is either we accept each law or reject it as a whole. If there are needs or wishes to introduce changes to a law, the procedures to be followed are equivalent to the suggestion of a new law inside the parliament,” Salah said.
According to procedures, suggestions for draft laws are presented to the parliament’s Suggestions and Complaints’ committee. With the existing code of conduct, an MP can make suggestions to amend some laws through a written form presented to the speaker. The law is then referred to the specialised committee and discussed between MPs.
The parliament is also planning on addressing some of the laws assigned to the National Defence and Security Committee, headed by Kamal Amer, former head of the military intelligence services.
The committee ranks first so far in terms of number of MPs joining, at 58 members, according to data available on the official parliament’s website.
One of the laws to be discussed Sunday is a decree ordered by President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi in October, stipulating the referral of those accused of crimes against the state’s “vital” facilities to military prosecution, amid accusations by political opposition and human rights’ advocates that the law majorly “expands military control”.
