Dr. Hossam Badrawi Official Website
Dream of justice
In general and in particular
Article banned from publication in Al-Masry Al-Youm
And then published in Al-Ahram!!!!!!!!
Written by Hossam Badrawi
“Don’t go to your grave carrying the best of you, and die empty to fill human lives”
I saw it as an eloquent and unconventional expression, and in this context, I look to the future of Egypt with a commitment to put forward ideas that contribute to building it. At the heart of the country’s future comes the functioning justice system, without which the state cannot stand.
Achieving justice is the goal, and it must depend on a qualitative and intellectual reform of the justice institutions and the “police” law enforcement institutions that are its means. The pillar of justice is one of the most important pillars of the modern civil state, in addition to opening the horizons of knowledge through the gate of education and culture.
Incomplete, slow, or selective justice and the citizen’s sense of injustice contradict the existence of a modern civil state. To develop its institutions, which are the means of society to achieve them, we must honestly review ourselves.
The state of right and law is based on the separation of powers and the protection of human rights and minorities, and the role of justice can only be achieved by confirming the separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers, which takes its true meaning when all powers are subject to the law. Legislation cannot express the will of the nation except in the case of respecting the rights of all citizens, and the executive authority cannot perform its functions as possessing the power of oppression and public power without respecting the laws and guarantees of citizens’ rights.
The principles of legality and constitutionality presuppose the existence of an independent and impartial judiciary, the rule of law, and the judicial system playing a central role in strengthening and protecting the state and citizens.
With regard to the rights of citizens, the matter is not only related to procedural rights, such as the right to a fair trial before an independent and impartial court established by law, and subject to predetermined procedures in the laws, but also to rights that may not be violated, even in cases of emergency and exception, such as the right to be free from torture, And degrading treatment of human dignity, the right to safety from enforced disappearance, and arbitrary detention.
A severe confusion occurred between the concepts of “state power” and state tyranny. This confusion led some agencies to perceive that the concept of state power is its tyranny, and that democracy means that the state becomes soft without realizing that democracy requires the state to be strong to the extent that it protects it. Democracy and achieving security and access to justice.
A strong state means the strength of the police apparatus, because it is the hand of the state in applying the law, as well as the strength of the administrative apparatus, which is measured by the extent of its development to keep pace with the course of the times. All that enables it to form and protect this tyranny, and on the one hand, to raise the levels of scientific competence in its entity on the other hand.
Someone will say that the independence of the authority of the justice system does not need confirmation because it is contained in the current and previous constitution, but I focus here on actual independence, not formality. The issue has become that the philosophy of the constitution and our understanding of it are not clear to some institutions of the executive authority.
While judges, lawyers and prosecutors enjoy the same human rights as any other human being, they must be especially protected because they are the guarantors of the enjoyment of these rights by others. If judges cannot assess the facts and apply the law at the national and international levels, the judicial system itself becomes arbitrary, and if lawyers cannot communicate with their clients freely, then the principle of equal opportunity and the right to defense, which requires treating both parties to a criminal case in the same way, will not be fulfilled.
However, the special protection that judges, lawyers and prosecutors should enjoy gives them special responsibilities. The principle of the independence of the judiciary does not allow them to overstep their authority to achieve personal benefits or to infringe on the rights of individuals. Therefore, judges may not decide cases according to their ideological or religious whims, but rather according to the facts and their legal description.
Counselor Hassan El-Badrawy says that we can state that since the establishment of the national courts in Egypt in 1883 until 1994. All the changes that occurred in this district, in terms of development and improvement in performance, are mostly of a quantitative nature, and opportunities have not yet come to bring about qualitative changes that were required by circumstances two decades ago, and which are now strongly and urgently required by circumstances.
The quantitative changes did not raise or remove the burden placed on the judiciary, which was more severe and greater than the quantitative changes that befell it, and it becomes clear to us immediately that even on the quantitative level alone, the gap is widening between the rate of improvement in judicial performance and the rate of increase in cases.
Move from generality to specificity in the application of justice, taking the example of economics:
Over the course of modern history, economic and social transformations of great influence have taken place, and resort to legislation in most cases to complete these transformations, from an agricultural system based on broad agricultural ownership and integrated into the English economic system, to a nascent agricultural-industrial system. To a purely Egyptian capitalist system To a totalitarian system based on central planning and in which individual ownership is hidden, To a new capitalist system that clings to its open approaches to the public sector To a capitalist system that seeks to be linked to the new world order and tends to privatize the public sector.
The choice of a free and open economy is the choice that responds to Egypt’s experience in recent decades and responds to all the global conditions that Egypt’s position imposes dealing with. Under a central government for more than seven thousand years, waiting for a role for the state in this field.
I imagine that the state has a role actually expected, within the framework of social liberalism approved by the constitution, but I affirm that it is not a role in economic activity itself, but rather a role in directing this activity, opening horizons for it, organizing and protecting it.
Developing overall provisions to reduce the economic role of the state also means setting provisions that enable the state to push individual economic activity forward, in short administrative procedures, relying on inspection and subsequent control instead of prior permits and licenses, employing tax and customs exemptions in encouraging investment and playing a positive role in Formation of informational bases serving the individual economy and reconsideration of many judiciary affairs with a new vision that puts it in front of future responsibilities, composition, evaluation, technology, and reconsideration of many of its own legislations, which were based on different philosophies, and linking all of this to the idea of the economic return to the rule of justice in the society.
Since economic freedom and free individual activity is what it likes to be, every legal barrier that undermines the exercise of this freedom must be removed, and in this regard, speed and efficiency must be achieved in adjudicating economic issues and state agencies must be prevented from pressuring business owners to achieve political interests or intimidate them. . As well as raising the level of performance of arbitration institutions to the limits by which Egypt overcomes the lack of scientific expertise that afflicted its entity in this regard and joins the developed world.
And if this economic orientation is the goal of the legislation, then it must take into account the lifting of all administrative obstacles that precede the individual’s exercise of economic activity, which leads to expanding the scope for deviation for junior employees, with all the frustration that this causes to the owner of the activity and the tampering with all his investment accounts.
It is among the characteristics of the Egyptian personality that it makes the principle in dealing with the law to be circumventing it, so the more the legal list is clear and clear in its provisions and branches, the more this opens up new meanings generated by the citizen and pushes him more to accept the legal rule and deal with it honestly.
We saw this applied in the tax law before 2011, which the state reverted to after that, despite the success of the experiment, simply because of the political violation, regardless of the benefits achieved from the mutual trust between the taxpayer and the state.
For many ages ago, the relationship between the citizen and the state was one marked by anticipation and mistrust, and this was reflected in legislation in various aspects, as it addressed citizens with a spirit full of suspicion and mistrust… We must now be careful to strip every legislation of this spirit and build on it. A look full of respect and confidence in the citizen.
