After more than a year of preparations, the National Dialogue proposed by President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi in April 2022 kicked off on 3 May 2023, reports Gamal Essam El-Din.
“I stress my support for the National Dialogue and vow that all means will be made available to ensure its success and implement its recommendations within a framework of democracy and effective political practice,” said Al-Sisi in a recorded message addressing the opening session.
National Dialogue General Coordinator Diaa Rashwan told Al-Ahram Weekly that the sessions represented a major political development in Egypt.
When participants met for the first time in May, they agreed no reforms should be excluded from the agenda bar items that impacted foreign policy and national security. “Participants just asked for guarantees that the dialogue’s recommendations will be implemented,” said Rashwan.
Participants also agreed that groups that had resorted to violence to impose their agendas should be excluded.
At the end of each round of sessions, recommendations passed by the subcommittees were referred to President Al-Sisi. Any recommendations requiring legislative amendments were sent to the House of Representatives and the Senate, while those that need executive steps to be taken were forwarded to the government.
Al-Ahram political analyst Amr Hashem Rabie believes the dialogue’s public sessions created a consensus over a raft of political, economic, and social reforms and that despite differences over some details participants all wanted to see the president, the government, and parliament turn recommendations into facts on the ground.
Rabie also noted the dialogue’s package of recommended political reforms included drafting a new law to establish an anti-discrimination commission, and that a majority of participants had argued that the number of members of the House of Representatives and Senate be increased to reflect population growth.
Alaa Essam, assistant rapporteur of the dialogue’s Local Councils Committee, said participants had agreed that as much as possible power be devolved to elected local councils and “recommended that councils be independent in terms of their performance and budget.”
Rabie also noted the Board of Trustees had recommended the 2014 law on the exercise of political rights be amended to allow greater freedom in terms of campaigning and media coverage, and that changes be introduced to Political Parties Law 40/1977 to make it easier to set up political parties.
The release of more than 2,000 political prisoners, including some convicted of charges and others held in pretrial detention, was closely connected to the National Dialogue. The releases followed requests by opposition forces — particularly the Civil Democratic Movement. Farid Zahran, a presidential candidate and chair of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, said in a TV interview that “the National Dialogue was made possible only by the authorities deciding to release political detainees.”
MP Mohamed Abdel-Aziz, a member of parliament’s Human Rights Committee, said since the launch of the National Dialogue and the reactivation of the Presidential Pardon Committee in April 2022, many prominent figures and human rights defenders had been released.
In July, President Al-Sisi pardoned high-profile Egyptian-Italian researcher Patrick George and human rights lawyer Mohamed Al-Baqer. Thirty detainees were pardoned in August, including political activist Ahmed Douma. In the same month the prosecution decided to release 33 pre-trial detainees, including political activists Youssef Mansour, Ahmed Hassanein, and economist Omar Al-Shenety.
“The prosecution’s decision and presidential pardons all helped create trust and sent a message of confidence about the new republic,” said Abdel-Aziz.
“The successive release of activists, be they serving sentences or in pretrial detention, confirms that there is a real will to open a new page with all political forces… [and] open the way for a boom in human rights work based on respect for freedom of opinion and the civil and political rights of all citizens,” the NCHR said in a statement.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 21 December, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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