Egypt’s Parliament Authorises Sisi to Defend Saudi Arabia Without Publishing a Vote Count

Egypt’s House of Representatives on Monday 26 October authorised President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to take measures, in coordination with Saudi Arabia, to defend the kingdom, by what its statement called a two-thirds majority of its members. It did not say how many members voted for it.

The approval came at the third closed session on the request, after sittings on 18 and 19 October, and was chaired by the Speaker, Hisham Badawi, Anadolu reported, citing the parliamentary statement. The House said the authorisation was consistent with the decisions of the National Defence Council at its 18 October meeting. According to Zawia3, an Egyptian news site, members voted by roll call and the House released no figures for approvals, rejections or abstentions; that detail is single-source. Arab News likewise gives no tally, only that the House approved the measure “by a two-thirds majority of its members.”

This publication set out on 20 October, in Two-Thirds Before the Troops, what could be checked on 26 October: whether the House took up the measure, what its text said about country, duration and place, and the tally measured against 398 rather than against those present. The first is answered. The other two are not.

What did the House approve?

A permission, not a deployment. As Zawia3 reports the statement, the mandate lets the president take the necessary measures to support Saudi Arabia and to “defend its territory, sovereignty and holy sites against any external aggression.” The statement did not specify what those measures are, and it did not explicitly announce that Egyptian troops would be sent, according to Anadolu’s account, which Middle East Monitor republished. Mr Sisi has said Egypt would act only if Riyadh asked, and as of Monday Saudi Arabia had not announced a formal request, Zawia3 reported.

The foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, said Cairo’s position “was clear in its support of Saudi Arabia for defensive purposes,” Arab News reported, and that the vote followed the constitution. None of the sources consulted for this piece reports a duration, a geographic limit or a requirement that the government report back to the House. Maha Abdel Nasser, a member who rejected the mandate, described the mandate as open-ended and vague, in Zawia3’s paraphrase.

What does the constitution require?

A consultation and a supermajority of the whole House. Article 152 of the constitution, in the Constitute Project translation, says the president “cannot declare war, or send the armed forces to combat outside state territory,” except “after consultation with the National Defense Council and the approval of the House of Representatives with a two-thirds majority of its members.” Arab News adds that Article 130 of the House’s internal regulations applies the same threshold. The base is the membership: the constitution “requires approval by two-thirds of the 596-member House, or 398 votes,” as The National put it before the vote.

The table below is this publication’s comparison of what Article 152 asks for and what the House has made public.

What does an unpublished count leave open?

Almost the whole range. By this publication’s arithmetic, a two-thirds majority of 596 is any figure from 398 to 596, which means as many as 198 members could have voted against, abstained or been absent and the measure would still have passed. A statement that says only “two-thirds” is consistent with every one of those 199 outcomes. Because the threshold counts members rather than votes cast, the abstentions that mattered most before the vote matter here too: the Egyptian Social Democratic Party had told its members to abstain, the Justice Party told its members to vote in favour, and the head of the Wafd Party’s parliamentary bloc and the independent member Diaa El-Din Dawoud reserved their positions, Zawia3 reported.

The debate itself was large. About 500 members asked to speak, the Deputy Speaker, Assem El-Gazzar, said, according to Zawia3; on 19 October The National, citing local media, had put the number who asked to speak in the closed sessions at about 300. Neither figure is a vote. A roll call produces a record of names, and that record exists somewhere in the House. It has not been published.

What is the authorisation responding to?

A campaign of Houthi missile and drone strikes on Saudi Arabia. Mr Sisi requested the mandate on 17 October, after a Houthi attack on Riyadh’s airport on 10 October killed 12 people, among them an Egyptian flight attendant, according to Zawia3. Al Jazeera had reported 14 deaths in attacks on King Khalid International Airport earlier in the month, as this publication noted on 20 October; the reports may describe different counts of the same strikes, and neither source reconciles them. The fighting on Yemen’s Red Sea coast was covered here in The Strait Again.

The vote moves the decision, not the troops. Under Article 152 the House has now done its part in advance, for a request that has not been made, on terms it has not published. The next step belongs to Riyadh, and the next document to read is whatever Cairo sends when it does.