A Matter of National Security

Last Monday the Egyptian parliament saw a violent discussion it  did not use before to see it considering the topic of the discussion and how heated the discussion was.

For the first time as I recall the Egyptian parliament discusses publicly the authorization given to the President concerning the arms deals and military production. You read it right , I do not recall that the Egyptian parliament had ever discussed this matter publicly in this heated way , I believe it was like intelligence laws which are usually approved with little small announcement in the newspaper that can be missed easily.

Now I had to read and ask more about this authorization for a whole day because I did not have any idea about it.

Now to explain the fuss , I will take from your precious time few seconds and tell you that the Egyptian parliament like any respectable parliament has a committee called the national security committee ,among the roles of this committee is to check the arms deals the Egyptian army contracts and the military production in order to make sure that our money is not wasted in shady deals and our national security is safe.

But of course due to the fact that we are not democratic country and the fact that we had too many wars in the past all our arms deals are classified as the parliament granted the president of Egypt “the commander in chief” an authorization to make arms deals and make decisions regarding our military production without consulting the parliament.

This authorization needs to be approved  for renewal by the majority of the parliament every 3 years, of course all that time the majority has been for the NDP.  The authorization based on a law approved in year 1974. Since then it was something taken for granted that the president would be given the authorization.

Last Monday the authorization had to be renewed , for the NDP bad luck there were couple of opposition members who objected the renewal and dared to discuss the taboo. Already we are not in war and we are in the middle of a terrible financial crisis we have the right to know how each penny in our budget is allocated.

The opposition members were led by MP Talaat Al-Sadat  whom I am not surprised for his refusal ; after all if you remember he was jailed for a year in a military prison for implying by a hand gesture in a TV show that his uncle president Sadat may have been assassinated because of the shady arms deals of some generals in the Egyptian army headed by Abu-Ghazla himself.  Sadat had a tough confront with the NDPian members who rudely and boldly reminded him that he was in jail for a year !! “That particular NDP member is Ex-police general Omar Abdel Fatah”

One of the opposition members that stood against the renewal was MP Mustafa Shardi from Al-Wafd party. The opposition believe that it was not fair to renew the authorization especially that we are not in war and other parliaments know about the arms deals , in fact our all our arms deals can be known though the internet nowadays.

Not so shocking the MB members stood with Mubarak and voted for the renewal that will be valid till 2012 !! Do not we have a presidential elections in 2010 if I am not mistake !!??

By the end of the day Mubarak got his authorization with 2/3 of the votes , Ahmed Ezz is not fooling around in the parliament. 

I know that those arms deals should not be announced all the time but on the other hand it is not logic to claim in your official newspapers that it is a matter of national security that requires confidentiality because of Israel when you insist on exporting your gas and oil to Israel !!  This is what was mentioned in Al Gomhouria newspaper yesterday for God Sake. Gas and oil are used in military proposes , they are the  future fuel of our tanks and airfighters , the same future fuel we are wasting and you are speaking about confidentiality importance and national security !!!

What if some corrupted generals in time of Peace contract on old arms deal , how can we expose them before the time of war !!??

The Parliament gets involved in this matter in time of peace because of accountability and transparency principles , it wants to make sure that tax payers money is allocated in the best way ever to serve the national security of the country in time of war , of course I do not expect that the honourable NDP members would understand this , because they believe that they love the country more than us and know what is the best for her “this is why all their kids are graduated from the AUC and have the American citizenship”

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