By Akram Medhat
Minister of Tourism Yehia Rashed held a meeting, at her request, with MP Sahar Talaat Moustafa, head of the House of Representatives' Tourism Committee, attended by members of the caretaker committee of the Egyptian Tourism Federation, the legal advisers of the ministry and the federation, the deputy head of the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority and the head of the ministry's companies sector.
MP Sahar Talaat Moustafa said that the aim of the meeting was to discuss the status of the elections for the board of the Egyptian Tourism Federation, especially after the complaints she received from investors in the tourism sector regarding the bylaws governing them and the postponement of the elections, as they had asked for a meeting with the Minister of Tourism to present their point of view.
In this context, Rashed stressed the ministry's keenness on the interests of the tourism sector and its desire to hold the elections with complete neutrality and on the basis of objective rules, so that the results truly reflect the will of the sector without any interference from the ministry.
For their part, the legal advisers reviewed the stages of preparing the joint basic bylaws of the tourism chambers and their federation and the legal procedures taken, starting with consulting the federation and surveying the sector's opinion, and ending with submitting them to the Legislation Department of the State Council, which decided to accept them after some amendments were made, which the ministry did before publishing the bylaws in the Official Gazette.
Regarding the elections, they explained that the rulings issued by the State Council in the lawsuits filed by some candidates who had been excluded from running were in the urgent part of the cases, have been appealed and are still before the courts, and that the decision to postpone the elections was taken out of keenness to produce results that truly represent the sector, free of any legal defect that could lead to their annulment once final rulings settling the dispute are issued.
The advisers presented two proposals for steps that could be taken regarding the chambers' elections. The first is to postpone the electoral process until after substantive rulings are issued in all the cases now before the courts, so that the ministry can hold it free from any suspicion of future annulment, thus ensuring the stability of the elected boards. The second is to hold the elections immediately after implementing the urgent rulings issued in favor of some, pending final rulings settling the dispute.
At the end of the meeting, MP Sahar Talaat Moustafa expressed her full understanding of the situation after what was presented, and proposed to the Minister of Tourism holding a meeting chaired by him and attended by the head and members of the caretaker committee of the Egyptian Tourism Federation and the legal advisers, with the investors who had submitted the complaints to her. Rashed welcomed this immediately, and the MP took it upon herself to invite them to the meeting as soon as possible.
