Scores of political activists, including 30 legislators, staged a protest in central Cairo Monday to call for democratic reform and an end to the Emergency Law, which has been in effect in Egypt since 1981. Demonstration in Al-Tahrir: Police scuffling with protesters in downtown Monday. Observers say the number of pro-democracy protests may rise, as parliamentary election get closer.
The demonstrators chanted slogans against the Government and expressed their displeasure at what they described as the deteriorating living conditions of the people of Egypt.
“These people have come here to express themselves and say ‘No’ to the deterioration of everything in their country,” said Hamdy Hassan, a legislator with affiliations to the banned Muslim Brotherhood. “They’ve the right to come here and protest peacefully,” he told the Egyptian Mail in an interview.
The protest of Hassan and his fellow activists was at centre stage of arguments between the Government and the opposition over the past few days. While the Ministry of the Interior refused to give the legislators approval to stage the protest in downtown Cairo, the MPs said they had to stage it because they did not always feel free to speak in Parliament.
“We’re always defeated by the majority of the ruling National Democratic Party inside Parliament,” said Alaa Abdel Moneim, another legislator in an interview with Egyptian TV on Sunday. “So, the protest on the street will give us the chance to speak freely away from the gangsters of the ruling party,” he added.
On Monday, hundreds of policemen cordoned off the place of the protest and prevented the activists, who included people from the protest Kefaya (Enough) group, from going into the street.
Some of the protesters prepared a list of demands, namely the abolition of Egypt’s Emergency Law, and amending articles 76, 77, and 88 of the Constitution, and vowed to march to Parliament to hand it to the top lawmaker Fathi Sorour.
The protest and the march, however, brought traffic on the main roads of the Egyptian capital to an almost complete halt. On Qasr el-Aini Street, which leads up to Tahrir Square where the protest took place, bus and car drivers were seen honking the horns of their cars, while traffic moved slowly along the road.
But this was not the reason for the anger of a majority of legislators at the protest.
The legislators, most of whom belonged to the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), lashed strongly out at Hassan and his colleagues for preferring to speak outside Parliament, not inside it.
“They could speak as freely as they want in Parliament,” said Abdel Ahad Gamal Eddin, a legislator from the NDP.
But Hassan said he and his colleagues attended the protest to help ordinary Egyptians express themselves without fear.
Egypt has brimmed with pro-democracy protests for some time now. Some observers expect the crescendo of opposition to rise in the days to come as this country prepares to hold parliamentary elections this year and presidential elections next year.
