'Wassat' by any other name...

By Amira Howeidy

The would-be founders were clearly disappointed. "We will continue along our path and will continue to seek other legal channels," a grim-faced Abul-Ela Madi, the leading would-be founder, told reporters. Essam Sultan, another original Wassat loyalist, said the court made a mistake in turning down the appeal.

Forty-eight hours later, Madi went to the Shura Council and applied for a licence for another party, called Egyptian Wassat, with a new platform and many new members. "We acted swiftly and did not sleep for many days in order to present our new platform," Madi told Al-Ahram Weekly. "We did this two days after our appeal was rejected because we wanted to put an end to the speculations that are going around. We wanted to present everyone with a practical answer."

Madi, a former member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, said that had the tribunal accepted his appeal, "we would have been, more or less, confused and bewildered. Our original list of founders mainly included people who were originally Brotherhood members. Had the party been granted a licence, we would have been faced with people who think that this is a Brotherhood party, although it is not," he said.

Madi admits that what he calls of the "Wassat trend" only became crystallised when the Brotherhood's old guard put pressure on many members, forcing them to withdraw from the party. With the exodus of Brotherhood members two years ago, Madi was left with less than 50 Wassat loyalists -- the minimum number of members required by law for party formation.

The alternative was to recruit new members to meet this legal requirement. "Thanks to the Brotherhood leaders, we adopted a new platform and won new members who believe in our ideas," Madi said.

Asked about these ideas and how different they are from the old platform, Madi said the Wassat "trend" is based on Arab-Islamic culture. "We had not put all our ideas in the old platform, and the new one is a development of ideas that we deem important," he added.

The old Wassat included only 50 members, but the new Egyptian Wassat boasts as many as 93. They include 39 workers and 54 professionals, of whom 19 are women, two are Christian and 10 are university students. There are also some public figures, such as Mohamed Kashef El-Eryan, under-secretary at the Ministry of Housing, Salah Ezz, a Cairo University professor, Salah Abdel-Kerim, former deputy chairman of the Engineers Syndicate, and Mohamed Abdel-Latif, a board member of the Arab Publishers Union.

The platform devotes an entire chapter to explaining the party's "terms of reference" and another to Islamic Shari'a. Other chapters come under titles such as "the main principles of the political system," "non-governmental activity," "the independence of religious institutions," "the problem of corruption," and "the collapse of the pillars of social justice." Further chapters deal with education, the environment, technological development and tourism.

Although the platform of the old Wassat received great attention from observers and the press, the Political Parties Tribunal and its predecessor, the Political Parties Committee, found it no different from the platforms of already-existing parties. That was the stated reason why the party's application for a license was rejected.

The question is: why go through another legal battle, if the chances of winning are slim? During the past 20 years, the Political Parties Committee has rejected applications for the establishment of more than 35 political parties.

But Madi is undeterred. "We believe that our position has improved and that we are viewed differently as we become more mature in our thinking and in the expression of this thinking," he said. "All this makes us feel much more optimistic."