On Tuesday, following a three-month summer recess, the House of Representatives, or parliament, began the fifth legislative session of its five-year term. The session marked the final parliamentary term before elections are held at the end of 2025 to elect a new parliament.

To mark the occasion, Speaker Hanafi Gebali delivered an address outlining the legislative agenda and current economic and regional challenges facing Egypt.

According to Gebali, parliament’s priority is to serve the interests of citizens and solve the problems they face. “In the new 2024-25 session parliament will continue passing laws that shall contribute to supporting citizens and maintaining their rights in an objective way,” said Gebali, adding that “parliament will also go ahead with exercising its supervisory roles in a serious way in coordination with the government to ensure that they serve the national interest and push development forward.”

Gebali said the new nine-month parliamentary session came amid economic and regional challenges facing Egypt due to the one-year war in Gaza and Israel’s “brutal aggression” against Lebanon. “The one-year war in Gaza and Israel’s blatant violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty could result in a comprehensive regional war with its disastrous economic and political consequences impacting neighbouring countries, including Egypt,” said Gebali, also referring to the civil war in Sudan, the political crisis in Libya, and the dangers threatening Somalia’s internal stability.

Gebali referred to another challenge resulting from the construction of the Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam (GERD). He accused Ethiopia of disrupting all efforts aimed at solving the crisis and criticised the recent declaration by Ethiopia’s prime minister on the fifth filling of the dam. “These unilateral Ethiopian policies violate the rules of international law and I emphasise that Egypt will never tolerate these policies or allow them to pose a threat to its water security or to the River Nile which is the only source of life for all Egyptians,” Gebali said.

Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Political Communication Mahmoud Fawzi said the government is open to all forms of cooperation with parliament and that it had high hopes that this will lead to introducing new reforms that can improve the lives of citizens and at last find solutions to chronic problems.

Like Gebali, Fawzi warned that the turmoil in the Middle East poses dangerous threats to Egypt’s stability and economy. “But I am sure that the Egyptian people are well aware of these threats and challenges which are unprecedented and will not allow them to destabilise the country,” Fawzi said.

According to Fawzi, the government strongly believes in transparency and commitment to truth. The government, added Fawzi, also believes that parliament’s supervisory tools are important to help it identify the problems and hardships people are facing and solve them. “What I want to say is that a strong parliament means a strong people and a strong government,” he said.

Fawzi vowed that the government will provide parliamentary committees with all the information necessary to do their job and that cabinet ministers will be always available to listen to the parliament’s recommendations and answer MP questions.

He indicated that a “very important” legislative agenda awaits the parliament’s final parliamentary session. “While some were chosen on the basis of presidential directives and cabinet requests, others are being presented on the recommendation of the National Dialogue’s Board of Trustees or to implement constitutional obligations,” said Fawzi, adding that “a mix of economic, social, and political laws will dominate parliament’s final session.”

In fact, he added, the government wants the new Criminal Procedures Law to top parliament’s new legislative agenda. “This law is a priority because it is an integral part of the new strategy of human rights and one of the major recommendations adopted by the National Dialogue, aiming to reinforce liberties and civil rights,” Fawzi added.

It took more than a year for a joint government-parliamentary sub-committee to prepare the 540-article draft law which was approved by parliament’s Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee on 11 September. The draft law, however, is expected to stir up controversy when it is put up for final discussion and voted on by parliament this month. The most controversial articles are related to the critical issue of pretrial detention. The Press Syndicate and the National Dialogue’s Board of Trustees voiced concerns that many of their recommendations on pretrial detention had been excluded from the draft approved by the committee. They want pretrial detention to be greatly reduced and that defendants be placed under electronic surveillance or house arrest rather than face pretrial detention. This differs from the draft approved by the committee which reduced the maximum period of pretrial detention for misdemeanours from six to four months and for felonies from 18 to 12 months. As for crimes that carry the death penalty or life imprisonment, the period will be reduced from 24 to 18 months.

Gebali announced that parliament had received 11 draft laws and 18 presidential decrees from the government to discuss and vote on them in the final session. Among these, indicated Gebali, there are draft laws regulating the performance of the Sovereign Fund of Egypt (TSFE); the registry of importers; joint-stock companies; the creation of a national council for education, research and innovation; the practice of the profession of pharmacy; and the construction of a logistics terminal for the handling and storing of dry goods at Alexandria Port. In addition, Gebali added, parliament received five bills licensing the petroleum minister to contract the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS), the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC), and four foreign companies to explore for oil and gas in the Mediterranean Sea, the Western Desert and the Nile Delta.

The government also announced in early September that it would refer a raft of priority draft laws to parliament to discuss and vote on in its final session. These include a 267-article labour law which was approved by the Senate two years ago. It bans child labour, mandates annual wage increases, places a cap on working hours, loosens regulations governing strikes and extends maternity leave and notice periods. The bill faced sharp criticism from the business community which said it was biased in favour of workers and did not reflect the needs of Egypt’s market economy.

The list also includes amendments to the Competition Law to ensure that competition rules are not violated and that “economic concentrations” — a reference to the dominance of a small number of firms in industries like defence and pharmaceuticals — do not negatively impact competition on the local market.

The priority list of draft bills also includes the long-awaited Local Administration Law and another legislation under which every property is given a digital ID on a centralised government database and penalties will be imposed on anyone who removes or otherwise tampers with them.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 3 October, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly