Parliament to do best to ease suffering

MP Hussein Issa, deputy head of the Egypt’s Support Coalition and chairman of the parliament's Planning and Budget Committee, called the Egyptian people for more patience, vowing that the parliament's members and the government will do more efforts to ease the suffering of the citizens, stressing the difficult stage in the country, worsening economic conditions that date back to tens of years.

Issa stressed that any economic difficulties facing the Egyptians are better than what happened in some countries, which led to its collapse not only from terms of economic, but in security, health and standard of living, stressing his understanding to the suffering of the Egyptian people.

The parliament's Planning and Budget Committee is replete with more elements of experience from the deputies or economics professors and academics from various Egyptian universities, Issa revealed during an interview with Al-Masry Al-Youm.

The committee aims to start from now in preparing new scenarios to deal with the 2017/2018 budget, Isaa said. He pointed out that there are sincere intentions of parliament for serious and effective control on the state budget, and coordinate with the concerned government ministries, headed by the ministries of finance and planning, to support the committee in rationalizing expenses expenditure items in such ministries and activating the activities and programs that parliament can be able to control and develop easily.

Regarding his opinion on the solutions to the current economic crisis, Issa said that the first what should be done is to reduce spending and further realization of the austerity plan in the state, in addition to thinking outside the box a little bit. He gave an example that government should develop a plan to exploit the large power of the population, rather than warning of high birth rates.

Regarding Egypt Support Coalition's opinion on the issue of Tiran and Sanafir, He said that this issue has not yet been resolved, pointing out that the coalition's leaders respect the provisions of the judiciary. Isaa stressed that despite the full our respect for judicial provisions issued in this regard, the parliament has the full right to discuss the convention according to the constitution.

Regarding the Coalition's legislative agenda, Issa said that they recently were able to accomplish amendments to the criminal procedure laws and to cases and procedures for appeal before the court of cassation, organize lists of terrorist entities, and anti-terrorism law, pointing out that the coming period requires looking for more investment legislation.