FINANCIAL TIMES : Raucous start for Egypt first free parliament

  Egypt’s first freely elected parliament got off to a raucous start at its inaugural session in Cairo on Monday, held just two days ahead of the anniversary of the January 25 revolution which toppled Hosni Mubarak, the former leader.

 

 

 

 

The previous parliament did little more than rubber stamp legislation presented by Mr Mubarak’s ministers. The new assembly is unlikely to be as pliant.

 

Dozens of new parliamentarians attended the first session wearing bright yellow sashes printed with the message “No to Military Trials for Civilians.”, referring to the thousands of Egyptians who have been tried in military courts by the country’s interim military rulers.

 

The inauguration began with a prayer to the hundreds of Egyptians who died during the revolution.

 

“I invite the distinguished assembly to stand and read the fatiha (Muslim prayer) in memory of the martyrs of the January 25 revolution ... because the blood of the martyrs is what brought this day,” said Mahmoud al-Saqa, 81, a member of the liberal Wafd party, who as oldest member of the house acted as speaker.

 

One by one members of the new assembly, answering a roll call, took the microphone to vow to protect the republican system, the interests of the people and “to respect the constitution and the law.”

 

However, controversy erupted when Mamdouh Ismail, an Islamist deputy from a small Salafi party, added the qualifying phrase “in whatever does not contradict God’s law”, prompting a rebuke from the speaker who asked him to stick to the original text.

 

Numerous Salafi deputies tried to add similar phrases to their vows, but with almost perfect timing the speaker’s assistant cut them off before they could add the phrase.

 

Those still determined to slip the phrase in began their vow with it.

The assembly is dominated by Islamists who, after decades of repression by the country’s former rulers, captured almost two-thirds of the seats in elections late last year.

 

Deputies from Freedom and Justice, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, form the largest bloc in the new parliament with 46 per cent of the seats. Nour, a party formed last year by ultraconservative Salafi Islamists, has a quarter of the seats.

 

The Salafi’s electoral gains were the biggest surprise of the Egyptian election. Their strong showing has discomfited the Muslim Brotherhood, which fears they will try to out flank them on Islamic grounds, dragging them into hardline positions that could rattle Egypt’s foreign partners or the army.

 

Unlike the Brotherhood, the Salafis want Egypt’s new constitution – to be drafted by a committee selected by parliament – to stipulate the full implementation of Islamic law.

 

Once the parliamentarians were sworn in, the session degenerated into a shouting match over procedures to choose the speaker of the house.

 

The FJP had agreed with other main political forces ahead of the inaugural session to appoint Saad al-Katatni, one of its senior officials, to the post.

 

However, other candidates noisily insisted on the right to address the parliament and present themselves to the assembly.

 

Mr Katatni was duly elected speaker and in his acceptance speech thanked the military council for keeping its promise to hold elections. He vowed “the revolution continues” – a reference to the slogan of protesters determined to unleash another wave of demonstrations against the ruling military council.

 

“We will not be content until all the aims of the revolution have been realised,” he said. “We will avenge the martyrs [killed during the uprising against Mr Mubarak] through fair, effective and fast trials and we will rebuild Egypt as a national, democratic, constitutional and modern state.”

 

The country’s military rulers had brought forward by more than a month the date of the opening session in a bid to sideline activists organising anniversary protests on January 25 aimed at pressing the generals to hand over power to civilians immediately.

 

About 200 protesters demonstrated in front of parliament chanting “we want bread, freedom and social justice” and “down with military rule, down with Mubarak; we are back to the days of Mubarak”.

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Robert Fisk: In the line of fire: Tom Hurndall

 

I don't know if I met Tom Hurndall. He was one of a bunch of 'human shields' who turned up in Baghdad just before the Anglo-American invasion in 2003, the kind of folk we professional reporters make fun of. Tree huggers, that kind of thing. Now I wish I had met him because – looking back over the history of that terrible war – Hurndall's journals show a remarkable man of remarkable principle. "I may not be a human shield," he wrote on 17 March from his Amman hotel. "And I may not adhere to the beliefs of those I have travelled with, but the way Britain and America plan to take Iraq is unnecessary and puts soldiers' lives above those of civilians. For that I hope that Bush and Blair stand trial for war crimes."

 

Hurndall got it about right, didn't he? It wasn't so simple as war/no war, black and white, he wrote. "Things I've heard and seen over the past few weeks prove what I already knew; neither the Iraqi regime, nor the American or British, are clean. Maybe Saddam needs to go but... the air war that's proposed is largely unnecessary and doesn't discriminate between civilians and armed soldiers. Tens of thousands will die, maybe hundreds of thousands, just to save thousands of American soldiers having to fight honestly, hand to hand. It is wrong." Oh, how many of my professional colleagues wrote like this on the eve of war? Not many.

 

We pooh-poohed the Hurndalls and their friends as groupies, even when they did briefly enter the South Baghdad electricity station and met one engineer, Attiah Bakir, who had been horrifyingly wounded 11 years earlier when an American bomb blew a fragment of metal into his brain. "You can see now where it struck," Hurndall wrote, "caving in the central third of his forehead and removing the bone totally. Above the bridge of his broken nose, there is only a cavity with scarred skin covering the prominent gap..."

 

Hurndall's picture of Attiah Bakir shows him as a distinguished, brave man who refused to leave his place of work as the next war approached. He was silenced only when one of Hurndall's friends made the mistake of asking what he thought of Saddam's government. I cringed for the poor man. 'Minders' were everywhere in those early days. Talking to any civilian was almost criminally foolish. Iraqis were forbidden from talking to foreigners. Hence all those bloody minders (many of whom, of course, ended up working for Baghdad journalists after Saddam's overthrow).

 

Hurndall had a dispassionate eye. "Nowhere in the world have I ever seen so many stars as now in the western deserts of Iraq," he wrote on 22 February. "How can somewhere so beautiful be so wrought with terror and war as it is soon to be?" In answer to the questions asked of them by the BBC, ITV, WBO, CNN, Al Jazeera and others, Hurndall had no single reply. "I don't think there could be one, two or 100 responses," he wrote. "To each of us our own, but not one of us wants to die." Prophetic words for Tom to have written.

 

You can see him smiling selflessly in several of his snapshots. He went to cover the refugee complex at Al-Rweished and moved inexorably towards Gaza where he was confronted by the massive tragedy of the Palestinians. "I woke up at about eight in my bed in Jerusalem and lay in until 9.30," he wrote. "We left at 10... Since then, I have been shot at, gassed, chased by soldiers, had sound grenades thrown within metres of me, been hit by falling debris..."

 

Hurndall was trying to save Palestinian homes and infrastructure but frequently came under Israeli fire and seemed to have lost his fear of death. "While approaching the area, they (the Israelis) continually fired one- to two-second bursts from what I could see was a Bradley fighting vehicle... It was strange that as we approached and the guns were firing, it sent shivers down my spine, but nothing more than that. We walked down the middle of the street, wearing bright orange, and one of us shouted through a loudspeaker, 'We are international volunteers. Don't shoot!'. That was followed by another volley of fire, though I can't be sure where from..."

 

Tom Hurndall had stayed in Rafah. He was only 21 when – in his mother's words – he lost his life through a single, selfless, human act.

 

"Tom was shot in the head as he carried a single Palestinian child out of the range of an Israeli army sniper." He was a brave man who stood alone and showed more courage than most of us have dreamed of. Forget tree huggers. Hurndall was one good man and true.

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Independent: EU s toughest sanctions yet put Iran on final warning over nuclear programme

 

The toughest sanctions yet imposed on Iran will be unveiled by the European Union on Monday amid warnings it could be the last chance to resolve the nuclear stand-off before military strikes are considered.

 

The punitive measures will include embargoes on oil, the country's central bank and financial institutions, with the aim of driving the Tehran regime to the negotiating table as it faces its revenue lifeblood being choked off.

 

Failure to persuade Iran to halt its nuclear weapons programme through the EU's sanctions, alongside similar moves by the US, would inevitably lead to pressure by Israel for air strikes. General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Tel Aviv yesterday to discuss the unfolding scenario and, according to diplomatic sources, dissuade Benjamin Netanyahu's government from taking pre-emptive action.

 

Details of the economic offensive show the extent to which Europe and the US intend to put Iran in a trade stranglehold while, at the same time, revealing the problems in enforcing the measures. The EU countries which buy 25 per cent of Iran's oil output are also the ones affected the worst by the eurozone crisis – Greece, Portugal and Spain. They will have to pay more for alternative supplies and also to modify refineries, but there are, at present, no plans by other member states to bail them out.

 

There is also apprehension that the embargo may end up by creating an oil shortage which will drastically push up prices, actually helping the beleaguered Iranian regime. China, a large-scale purchaser of Iranian fuel will, it is believed, continue with existing contracts, while other major buyers such as India, Japan and South Korea have indicated they will have to find alternative sources of supply before jettisoning Iranian oil.

 

The uncertainties have forced the EU to put a review system in place to monitor the effect of the sanctions. Iranian clients such as Greece will be given an extended time period, of between three and eight months, to find replacement for Iranian supplies.

 

The policy will be reassessed if it appears to be backfiring, with the price of oil rising steeply and the weakened economies going into tailspins.

 

Intense negotiations have been held with other members of OPEC (Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) to try to persuade them to raise production. Western diplomats insist there are strong signs that Saudi Arabia and producers in the Gulf, fierce Sunni rivals of Shia Iran, will help. The issue was discussed during a visit to Bahrain by Prince Turki al-Faisal, the highly influential former head of Saudi intelligence, earlier this week.

 

The UK's trade links with Iran are small, with only 0.7 % of oil, worth £147m out of a total import bill of £19.4bn, coming from the country. Exports of goods and services from Britain in 2010 amounted to £414m – a fall of around 41 per cent from the previous year. Import of goods from January to September last year were around £178m.

 

Information obtained by The Independent shows there are six Iranian companies operating in the UK – Bank Saderat, Bimeh Iran Insurance, Bank Sepah, Melli Bank, NPC and the National Iranian Oil Company. Some of these may be on the sanctions list being drawn up over the weekend. Five British companies – Shell, BP, Rio Tinto, BAT and Clontarf – continue to operate in Iran and will be affected by both the EU oil sanctions and the US regulations on counties trading with Tehran.

 

The Central Bank of Iran will be on the sanctions list and there will be a freeze on the movement of the country's gold reserves held abroad, putting further strain on trading activities and triggering what President Ahmadinejad complained was "the heaviest economic onslaught on a nation in history".

 

The value of the national currency, the rial, has fallen to an all-time low of 18,000 to a dollar, a drop of 6,000 in a month. With fresh tightening of the screw to come, the foreign minister, Ali Akber Salehi, warned Gulf states against putting themselves in a "dangerous position" if they sided with the West and raised production. The minister claimed, at the same time, that the US, in particular, was "playing a two-faced game". "They are flexing their muscles in public but also secretly saying 'come and talk with us'," he said.

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HAARETZ : Egypt to announce final results of parliamentary elections

 

Elections officials are expected to announce on Saturday the final results of Egypt's parliamentary polls, which were conducted over three stages lasting from November through January.

 

Results come two days before the new parliament, with 498 elected members and 10 appointed members, is scheduled to hold its first session.

 

Preliminary results indicate that Islamist parties - which were allowed to be licensed following the ouster of Hosni Mubarak last year - secured around 70 per cent of the seats in the lower house of parliament, or People's Assembly.

 

The prime task of the new parliament will be to pick a committee tasked with drafting a new constitution for Egypt.

 

Elections for the less powerful Shura Council, or upper house of parliament, are to be held in two stages, with voting taking place between January 29 and February 22.

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HAARETZ : Final results: Muslim Brotherhood wins sweeping victory in Egyptian elections

 

The Muslim Brotherhood's electoral coalition has won 38 percent of seats allocated to party lists for Egypt's parliament, with Islamists of various stripes taking more than two thirds of the assembly, in line with their own forecasts.

 

According to final results issued by the High Elections Committee on Saturday, the hardline Islamist Nour Party won 29 percent of list seats. The secular New Wafd and the Egyptian Bloc coalition came third and fourth respectively.

 

Under a complex electoral system, two thirds of seats in Egypt's 498-seats lower house are decided by proportional representation on closed party lists. The other third are contested by individual candidates.

 

Earlier this month, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns met Mohamed Morsi, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), in Washington's highest level outreach to the Islamist group as part of a series of meetings with Egyptian political figures in Cairo.

 

Nuland said Burns did not meet hardline Salafists, which have also logged strong showings in early rounds of voting and espouse an even more conservative view of Islam that some have compared to Afghanistan's Taliban.

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independent : Assad s tanks withdraw from opposition-held town

Syrian government tanks and armoured vehicles have pulled back from an embattled mountain town near Damascus, witnesses said, as a month-long Arab League fact-finding mission expired.

 

The withdrawal from Zabadani left the town under the control of the opposition, activists said. It had witnessed heavy exchanges of fire between army troops and anti-government military defectors over the past six days.

 

The 10-month uprising against the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, has become increasingly militarised and chaotic as frustrated regime opponents and army defectors arm themselves and fight against government forces.

 

According to a protocol signed by the Syrian government, an Arab League observer mission ended yesterday, but can be renewed for another month. The mission has been mired in controversy, with the opposition claiming it served as a cover for the regime to continue its brutal crackdown.

 

The League will discuss on Sunday whether or not to extend the mission.

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Independent : 2011: A year when freedom lost ground

The world was a less free place last year despite the toppling of dictators in the Middle East, which represented the "most significant challenge to authoritarian rule since the fall of Soviet Communism", according to a report.

 

The Freedom in the World report – produced annually by the NGO Freedom House – showed that while the Arab Spring brought major gains for political rights and civil liberties, there have also been "harsh and sometimes murderous reaction[s]" to the uprisings in the Middle East, China and other regions.

 

Overall, the levels of freedom enjoyed by people in 26 countries declined in 2011, while only 12 showed a net improvement, according to the report. It is the sixth consecutive year in which the number of countries becoming "less free" has outnumbered those becoming more so.

 

"The Middle East is a part of the world that has been immobile and apathetic for decades. But now, things are actually happening that are probably the most important gains for freedom in a decade," said Arch Puddington, Freedom House's vice-president for research.

 

"On balance, there has been a slight decline across the world but in the key areas, there has been a move towards freedom. In areas untouched by the democratic revolution, you are seeing movement, so it is encouraging.

 

"In Tunisia and Egypt, gains this year can turn into retreats in the future," added Mr Puddington. "One of the world's biggest threats is Egypt, it is a huge challenge. There are elections, the constitution will be written and the formation of a government is ahead, all potentially major challenges to freedom. It is the most important country in the Arab world. And it also represents the biggest opportunity for the future."

 

He identified Syria as a major security issue and added: "we are concerned about democracies which are slipping: Ukraine, Turkey and South Africa, for example."

 

The report examines the ability of individuals to exercise political and civil rights in a total of 195 countries and 14 territories around the world, based on the events of last year. It assigns each a score out of seven and a status of free – the lower score the freer – partly free, or not free.

 

The countries are then ranked according to the change in the level of freedom enjoyed compared to 2010.

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Independent: EU should block finance for Israeli settlements

 

The European Commission should consider passing legislation to prevent finance generated within its member states being used to support illegal Israeli settlements in occupied territory, the bloc's top diplomats in Jerusalem and Ramallah have advised.

 

The proposal is made in a report warning that a new surge in Jewish settlement expansion in Arab East Jerusalem, among other policies, is "systematically undermining the Palestinian presence" in the city and making the prospect of it becoming the shared capital of two states "increasingly unlikely and unworkable".

 

The report argues that "attempts to emphasise the Jewish identity of the city at the expense of Muslim and Christian residents" – including outsourcing archaeology in sensitive sites close to the Old City to a powerful settler group, Elad – "threaten its religious diversity and provide fuel to those want further to radicalise the conflict with regional and global repercussions".

 

It makes an urgent call for the EU to adopt a more "active and visible" implementation of its policy. And it paints a bleak picture of how Israel is "perpetuating" its unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem after the 1967 war – a move never accepted as legal by European governments – in ways that are "increasingly undermining the two-state solution".

 

The report points out that 10 per cent of the city's resources are spent on services for Palestinians, who represent 37 per cent of the population. There are 200 planning permissions granted to Palestinians per year compared with the 1,500 they need, it adds, with a consequent wave of house demolitions. Up to 90,000 people live under threat of having their homes demolished.

 

The potentially radical proposal for "appropriate EU legislation to prevent/discourage financial transactions in support of settlement activity" is the first indication that some member states are seeking European divestment from businesses actively involved in the settlement enterprise.

 

The finance recommendation has been worded with deliberate vagueness to maintain a consensus among sharply differing views within the EU. But the clear implication is that some of the European Consuls General – ambassador-rank representatives to the Palestinians – want the Commission to consider for the first time whether it has an obligation to legislate on the grounds that the settlements contravene international law.

 

Under one interpretation of the proposal, the Commission would use legislation to force companies in Europe to break their links with businesses involved in settlement construction and commercial activities. This follows some high-profile voluntary examples like that of Deutsche Bahn, which last year pulled out of electrification of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem rail link because it cut through the West Bank.

 

The report also says the Jerusalem municipality is failing in its obligation to provide schooling for all Palestinian children, with less than half now attending municipal schools.

 

Asaf Sharon, a member of the Israeli group Solidarity, which has been active in opposing evictions and demolitions in the Sheikh Jarrah district of East Jerusalem, said he was struck by the urgency with which the European diplomats regarded the situation in Jerusalem, compared with a lack of a similar sense in Israel itself. "I hope EU would act on the report's conclusions," he said. "Now they have to be proactive for all our sakes."

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New York Times: Hoarding Is Seen as Cause of Fuel Shortage in Egypt

 

A sudden shortage of gasoline gripped Egypt over the weekend, raising new concerns about its teetering economy and its political stability.

The state news media said the empty pumps and long lines were caused by hoarding, prompted by what were called false rumors of an impending increase in gasoline prices, which the government sets at artificially low levels through enormous subsidies.

 

The shortage comes at a time when the government is running out of money that it might use to increase fuel supplies, if only to dispel such panic. Egypt’s reserves of foreign currency, needed both to prop up the Egyptian pound and to keep fuel prices down, have dwindled to critically low levels.

 

The crisis began with the collapse of tourism and foreign investment, two vital sources of foreign currency for the country, after the revolts that ousted President Hosni Mubarak broke out a year ago.

 

With 40 percent of the population living below the poverty line, any potential increase in fuel prices, or in the price of other basic necessities caused by a fall in the exchange rate, could spur renewed unrest. Street protests are already a regular occurrence here, usually demanding the departure of the military rulers who took power from Mr. Mubarak.

 

Over the past three months, at least 80 demonstrators have been killed and hundreds seriously injured as security forces have tried to put down the protests.

 

Though gas stations across the country were turning away customers for lack of fuel, and long lines were forming at the ones that still had gasoline to sell, the Ministry of Petroleum issued a statement over the weekend asserting that the country’s fuel supply was still more than adequate to meet all public needs.

 

“In spite of that, it was recently noticed that there’s crowdedness around gas stations as a result of the rumors circulated about an increase in the prices,” the state-run newspaper Al Ahram reported. The government urged Egyptians “not to crowd around gas stations and not to listen to rumors,” which it said “only aim at stirring insecurity in the hearts of citizens.”

 

A rush on the pumps may have been sparked by the news this month that in order to conserve badly needed cash, the ruling military council planned to reduce the amount of natural gas and other commodities used by heavy industry.

 

But many economists have argued for years that Egypt’s heavy subsidies of energy for consumers were increasingly untenable, even before the current economic crisis began. Egypt spends as much as 10 percent of its gross domestic product subsidizing energy costs, even though the benefits flow disproportionately to affluent consumers who drive big cars and live in large villas.

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