The quarrel between the 141-year-old Al-Ahram daily and the speaker began earlier this week when he harshly criticized the paper's coverage of the legislature, a 596-seat chamber packed with supporters of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
Parliament Speaker Ali Abdel-Al said the paper was mismanaged and had better remember that "we finance it." He later made conciliatory comments about Al-Ahram but that didn't stop a scathing front-page commentary by the paper's editor-in-chief from being published today.
"The speaker of parliament is a man of the law who should verify his facts and not recklessly make accusations against a veneered institution," the editor-in-chief wrote.
The spat has reignited controversy over Abdel-Al, a zealous el-Sissi supporter who has not taken kindly to criticism of his heavy-handed style of running the chamber.
Responding to recent media reports of lavish spending by the legislature when Egypt suffered an economic crisis, he said the house's finances were a national security issue that must not be publicly discussed.
However, the spat appears to be more about decorum in public remarks than free speech. The parliament is widely seen as a rubber-stamp house while Al-Ahram, a traditional government mouthpiece, rarely criticises or questions the president's policies.
Earlier this week, Abdel-Al oversaw the expulsion of a lawmaker critical of the government's human rights record and of the speaker's suppression of criticism of the government.
The lawmaker, Mohammed Anwar Sadat, was charged with leaking a confidential draft law to foreign diplomats and of forgery. He has denied the charges.
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