Half of Egyptians wanted by prosecutor – Middle East Monitor

Egypt’s National Electoral Authority has decided to refer more than half of the Egyptian people to the Public Ministry to investigate the fact that more than 54 million Egyptian citizens did not participate in the Senate elections last week.

I could not believe what I saw while reading the news and for a moment I thought it was a hoax, but I was surprised when I heard the statements of Councilor Ibrahim Lashin, head of the National Electoral Authority, explaining the circumstances of this strange situation. decision and its legal basis.

In accordance with article 57 of the Law on the Exercise of Political Rights, decreed No. 45 of 2014, whoever does not participate in the elections will be sanctioned with a fine equivalent to 500 Egyptian pounds. In this case, it means that if 54 million Egyptians are summoned (equivalent to 85 percent of eligible voters and 50 percent of Egypt’s population) or have all been charged the full value of the fine, the state will earn approximately 26 billion and 990 million pounds.

Worth it?

This is the question worth answering, especially since the Senate is nothing more than a decorative facade that has nothing to do with decision-making in the political life of the country. Even the decision to form this council was made in the recent constitutional amendments in which Al-Sisi demanded to remain in power until 2030. Some superficial features were added so that it does not appear that Al-Sisi only wants these amendments to serve him . The formation of the Senate was one of those absurd features.

The Senate is made up of 300 members, 100 of whom are appointed by Al-Sisi, 100 appointed by the closed list system and 100 by the single seat system.

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Surprisingly, in addition to the 100 members appointed by Al-Sisi, only one list has been put forward to contest the other 100 seats, which is the pro-Al-Sisi party, The Nation’s Future, in association with other parties. In effect, this means that they were elections based on the setting, dialogue and leadership of Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and his associates.

In any democracy, if 85 percent of the electorate decided for different reasons to abstain from participating and voting, the parties would react by immediately acknowledging their defeat by the electorate. Furthermore, they would resign immediately after failing the voter confidence test. Unfortunately, reality confirms that there is a vast difference between democratic systems and experiences, on the one hand, and what Egypt is currently experiencing under Al-Sisi, on the other.

On the contrary, rather than examining the political failures of the regime and its allies, there was talk on pro-regime satellite channels of collecting these fines from half the Egyptian people and trying to answer the question: Can the Public Ministry accommodate the appearance? of more than 50 million Egyptians at its headquarters?

Some jurists have proposed five effective means that the state can adopt to collect these fines from the Egyptian people: when a citizen seeks to acquire a personal identification card; when applying for a driver’s license; when they immediately pay the fine that would be sent to the domicile of each citizen and he must pay it directly. Otherwise, it could be deducted from the employee’s salary or perhaps surprise the citizen when he tries to get some official document that he must pay 500 EGP.

A man riding a donkey near a polling station in the city of el-Ayyat in the Giza province south of the Egyptian capital on August 11, 2020 holds an election poster for a candidate running for the elections of the upper house in the newly created Senate. [AFP via Getty Images]

The regime has raised a banner that says: the people are “wanted by the Prosecutor’s Office” and, therefore, the state, with its apparatus and security and judicial agencies, will persecute half of the Egyptian people. In the future, citizens will be afraid to go to government institutions. Every month they will wait to make sure they received their full salary, without any deductions. When they go to obtain an official document or renew their driver’s license they will be looking around anxiously, waiting for the moment of arrest to force them to pay the fine for abstaining from voting.

What the regime does is contrary to article 65 of the Egyptian constitution issued in 2014, which stipulates: “Freedom of thought and opinion is guaranteed. Everyone has the right to express their opinion in oral, written, photographic or other means of expression and publication ”.

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However, the current Egyptian regime does not recognize freedom of opinion or the right of the Egyptian citizen to express himself. The regime creates a Senate by electing Al-Sisi with candidates close to him and contestants who owe him loyalty, as if the concept of freedom of opinion in this regime were “the right to express what Al-Sisi wants.”

Since 2014, the current Egyptian regime has experienced an internal crisis with the concept of legitimacy of the elections and the choice of the people. The regime, which staged a military coup in the first democratic experience after the January Uprising, is still caught in the specter of fear. Al-Sisi regards each new election as a new referendum on his survival and legitimacy in power.

The problem here is not in the Senate, but in the Egyptian parliamentary elections that will take place next month. Al-Sisi and his regime will not be able to endure a scenario similar to the false Senate elections.

The strategy of fear and economic pressure on the Egyptian people is the most prominent feature of this current regime. With more than 60 percent of Egyptians living below the poverty line according to the latest World Bank data, the specter of the £ 500 election fine haunts Egypt’s poor and ordinary citizens.

Translated from Arabi21, 28 august 2020

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.