Sisi flirts with pensioners .. Why now?

Mohamed Seif El Din - Cairo

In a surprise move, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called on the government to withdraw its appeal in a court ruling in favor of pensioners with the right to add 80% of the value of the last five allowances received to the value of their wages.

Sisi also called for the repayment of the total indebtedness owed to the pension funds by the Ministry of Finance and the National Investment Bank through the preparation of special legislation to regulate these procedures. The implementation of the settlement will start from the new fiscal year 2019-2020 (fiscal year beginning July 1, ).

The Ministry of Social Solidarity immediately wrote a memorandum to the General Assembly of Legislation and Fatwa in the State Council - the competent administrative judiciary - to clarify the opinion on the work of settlement required for special allowances for pensioners in the light of the judicial decision, according to local media reported.

The Cairo Court of Emergency Matters set the March 24 hearing to consider the appeal filed by the Minister of Social Solidarity to stop the implementation of the Supreme Administrative Court ruling on the right of pensioners to pay the last five allowances.

This came after the Supreme Administrative Court ruled in a final ruling and on 21 February rejected appeals by the Minister of Solidarity for a previous ruling in favor of pensioners in the same case issued by the Administrative Court, the lowest degree.

Funds owed to pensioners are estimated at more than one trillion and 300 billion pounds (about $ 75 billion), said Munir Sulaiman, vice president of the General Federation of Pensioners.

For his part, President of the General Federation of Pensioners Badri Farghli expressed his happiness with the decision of Sisi, saying that "the president responded to the rights of nine million families of pensioners, and they are now enjoying a joy."

Invisible protest
"There is another dimension in the issue of pensions, which is the geographical dimension, where the owners spread throughout the country, which causes a problem at the level of the Republic if they decided to go down the street and inform the people of their cause and the attention of the media,

Hamed told Al-Jazeera Net that the Egyptian regime fears the spread of opposition to him, and that the joining of this segment to the ranks of opponents is a great burden, especially in light of the popular campaign launched by the media opponent Moataz Matar under the name "Atman you are not alone."

Observers believe that the system wants to pass the constitutional amendments, approved by the Egyptian parliament in the middle of last month, in a calm.

These amendments to the 2014 constitution allow President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to remain in power until 2034, and give the military a higher authority than all state institutions as protector of the constitution and state citizen.

Critics considered that these amendments nullify the Sisi in the government, and make the army guardian of the state to amend article 200 of the Constitution to give the army the responsibility to protect "the Constitution and democracy and the basic form of the country and its civilian nature."

The proposed constitutional amendments oppose a broad spectrum of Egyptian activists and politicians, including parliamentarians and figures who have allied with Sisi to oust President-elect Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

The story of pensions
The story of the pensioners began in 2006, when the Social Insurance Authority calculated the pensions of those referred to retire without the addition of 80% of the allowances they received in the last five years before reaching the retirement age, to the variable wage, which ultimately affected the value of the pension they receive.

This means that all those who have retired since that date have not benefited from the calculation of the addition of these allowances to their pension. The variable wage is all that the insured employee receives, from a monetary remuneration for his work, and does not fall into the basic wage (ie allowances, allowances, etc.).

A group of pensioners filed a lawsuit against the measure, based on a 2005 ruling by the Supreme Constitutional Court that pensioners who retired by resigning would be eligible to recover these allowances.

Another group of pensioners filed another lawsuit in 2013 before the Supreme Constitutional Court to challenge the decision of the Social Insurance Authority on the grounds that it is not constitutional.