Parliament Speaker tells state's Al Ahram why Egyptians should cast ballots in Senate race

CAIRO – 7 August 2020: Egypt’s Parliament Speaker spoke for hours with state’s newspaper Al Ahram, encouraging Egyptians to participate in the upcoming Senate elections and reviewing the two raging topics of the Renaissance Dam and the planned Egyptian military intervention in Libya.

Abdel Aal has headed the Parliament since January 2016, and since then, 804 legislations have been passed. Parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held late this year.

“First of all, I call on all Egyptians to be keen on exercising their constitutional right to choose their representatives in the second parliamentary chamber,” Abdel Aal told Alaa Thabet, Al Ahram’s editor-in-chief.

He added that the Senate will include “intellectual, political and legal figures in all fields and disciplines, which deepens discussions on the laws that are presented to it.”

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Abdel Aal viewed the reinstation of the second parliamentary chamber as part of a comprehensive political reform plan in the country and a result of the desire of major sectors inside the Parliament following June 30 Revolution in 2013.

As the Parliament in July has voted in favor of a proposal authorizing the President to take the necessary actions to preserve national security, including the right to send Egyptian troops to Libya, Abdel Aal said the Parliament is working on supporting the political leadership’s efforts to achieve stability in Libya.

“We are in continuous communication with the Libyan Parliament, led by … Aguila Saleh,” he said, adding that the Egyptian House has made many bilateral meetings, with the aim of unifying the vision and voicing support to the brothers in Libya”.

“We also work together to present the Libyan issue to various international and regional parliamentary forums, in order to clarify the situation and the whole image, and to request the support of parliaments of the world countries and their governments for efforts to bring peace to Libya”.

Abdel Aal denounced Turkey’s interference in the Libyan affairs, through fueling dispute between the conflicting parties -the Government of National Accord (GNA) led by Fayez Al-Sarraj and the Libyan Parliament along with the Libyan National Army led by Khalifa Haftar.

“It is no longer hidden from anyone today the blatant interference that Turkey is carrying out in the Libyan affairs, whether militarily through the presence of Turkish soldiers on the Libyan lands, and through signing of two null and void memoranda of understanding with the Sarraj government, on security and military cooperation”.

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On the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), Abdel Aal said Egypt has dealt with the issue in a diplomatic way and has chosen negotiations since the beginning of the crisis, based on the principle of good intentions and the desire to develop bilateral relations between Egypt and Ethiopia.

“Let me affirm that Egypt has never denied the right of any country of the Nile Basin to maximize its benefit from the Nile River. It rather recognizes the right of development, whether through establishing dams, producing electricity or energy, or establishing developmental projects on both sides of the river, but without harming others or breaching any historic rights of the two downstream countries”.