At a meeting with the Model Youth Parliament on Wednesday, Parliamentary Speaker and ruling party stalwart Fathi Sorour declared that the spate of recent labor demonstrations outside the parliament building in downtown Cairo served to confirm Egypt’s standing as a “democratic country” that grants its citizens the right to organize labor strikes.
“As long as they are peaceful demonstrations, we’ll look into protesters’ demands,” he said.
Replying to a question about the refusal of the government’s political parties committee to grant licenses to new opposition parties, Sorour said: “Any party rejected by the committee can seek redress in the courts.”
He added that the only three opposition parties of any significance were the Wafd, Nasserist and Tagammu parties, as the rest were “largely ineffective.”
Answering a question as to why Egypt only ranked 111th in a recent report on governmental transparency, Sorour said the low ranking did not necessarily mean that the country suffered from corruption.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
