President Hosni Mubarak yesterday pledged to improve democracy in Egypt and abolish the 25-year state of emergency once a new anti-terrorism law is passed.
Laying out the legislative agenda for next year, Mubarak told lawmakers he would soon ask them to amend 34 articles in the Egyptian Constitution to "consecrate the people's sovereignty as a source of power and give parliament more authority to monitor the government."
"Today's historic step opens the door wide for democracy and its practice," Mubarak said in a speech at his palace in Cairo.
A leading Egyptian rights activist, Hisham Qassem, was skeptical of the president's pledge as he has promised greater democracy many times before.
"We have to go back to the gap between the regime's actual practices and the demand for amendments ... Will the regime really implement these amendments?" Qassem said.
Previous amendments were "followed by theatrical debate while everything was already fixed," he said.
Most of the reforms outlined yesterday were promised by Mubarak in his election campaign last year, but none came to parliament this year. It is thought the government got cold feet when, two months after the presidental elections, the opposition Muslim Brotherhood did surprisingly well in last year's legislative elections.
Opposition parties and political observers have long accused Mubarak and his National Democratic Party of rigging elections and using the emergency laws -- introduced after president Anwar Sadat's assassination in 1981 -- to stifle dissent in Egypt. The emergency gives the government sweeping powers to detain suspects and restrict public gatherings.
"Terrorism is a red line that I will not allow anyone to cross," Mubarak said yesterday. "I asked last year to draft a law to combat terrorism to replace the current emergency law."
He did not give a time for the passage of the new anti-terrorism law and the amendments.
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