In spite of the Brotherhood’s request for information, which caused the fuss about the confiscated novels by Farouq Hosni, the members of the People’s assembly belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood can be seen to be avoiding direct clashes with the government over public issues. This is quite clear as no request for additional information was presented, and they contented themselves with about sixty questions and requests for information, most of which were local demands concerning services for their electoral districts.
For example members belonging to the Brotherhood did not pay any attention to membership of the religious committee, whilst they were concerned about the education committee. The education committee approves the parliamentary member for the Minister for education. These meetings with the minister allow members to get approval for their requests to transfer teachers from one school to another, for assignment of new teachers and for promotions. These requests are one of the methods by which any member can gain public popularity in his electoral district.
Three members belonging to the Brotherhood chose to join the Education committee. These three members are Dr. Mohammed Morsi, Ali Yassin and Mohammed Al-Gharbawi. Dr. Gamal Heshmat decided to resign from the Health committee and join the Education Committee, bringing the number up to four. Dr. Gamal is the one who caused the crisis by requesting information concerning the novels released by the Culture Palaces Authority.
After Dr. Gamal resigned from the Health Committee, the presence of the Brotherhood in this committee was limited to two members, only Dr. Akram Al-Shaer and Dr. Hamdy Hassan remained. The health committee is the same as the education committee in terms of it providing a service and being a way of connecting with people in the electoral districts.
The industry committee and the local administration committee share the good fortune of the health committee, as each of them has two members belonging to the Brotherhood. The industry committee has Mahfouz Helmy and Ali Fath Al-Bab, whilst the local administration committee has Mustafa Mohammed and Azzab Mustafa.
The other five Brotherhood members, the total number of whom is 15 and not 17 as previously said, are divided among five committees. Mohammed Mustafa in the agriculture committee, Sabeer Abdel Sadiq in the housing committee, Sayyed Al-Shury in the transportation committee, Hussain Mustafa in the suggestions and complaints committee, Mohammed Al-Fouli in the culture and media committee.
As the Muslim Brotherhood is no longer thinking of questioning the government further, in order to avoid any clashes, they have turned to questions and requests for information that raise issues of local interest.
The Brotherhood presented two requests for information to the Minister for Education. The first request concerned the reasons for ignoring court rulings concerning the re-organization of the elections of student’s unions in universities. The second was about the absence of, what they called, educational, ethical and religious aims in the ministry’s policy.
Some parliamentary observers emphasized to Sout Al-Umma that the absence of the Brotherhood in a number of important committees, such as the constitutional and legislative committees, didn’t mean the Brotherhood lacked interest in these committees, just that they are seeking to explore the lobbies of the People’s Assembly, to make a more effective plan for the future.
The Brotherhood’s absence from the religious committee attracted attention at a time when the government thought they would concentrate on it and appointed three of the nominated members to the committee, Dr. Abdel-Mo’ti Bayoumi, Dr. Abdel Rahman Al-Adawi and Dr. Zaynab Radwan.
Political sources warned about the danger of the presence of members belonging to the Brotherhood in the education committee holding 20% of the committee’s total votes. Although this percentage doesn’t allow them to impose their opinions on the committee they can coordinate with other members of the committee who belong to the National Party, but ran in the election as independent candidates.
