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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 April 1999 Issue No. 425 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 April 1999 Issue No. 425
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Labour members complain of Hussein autocracy
By Gamal Essam El-Din
Ibrahim Shukri's Islamist-oriented Labour Party today opens a general congress, the seventh since the party was established in 1979. The two-day congress is expected to draw over 1,000 delegates representing the party's branches in 24 governorates. According to the party's Secretary-General Adel Hussein, the congress will elect a 45-member executive committee. Some 110 members are contesting the elections. The congress will also elect the party's leading officers, including the chairman, deputy chairman, secretary-general and five assistants to the secretary-general. The party's political bureau will subsequently consist of the chairman, deputy chairman, secretary-general and eight executive committee members.
It is a foregone conclusion that Shukri will be re-elected chairman, uncontested.
Hussein said the first day would be devoted to an opening speech by Shukri and committee debates on a number of "political papers" submitted by the party's representatives in several governorates. It will also debate proposals for amending the party's executive statutes and turning the party's bi-weekly Al-Shaab into a daily newspaper.
Shukri announced on Tuesday that he would emphasise the party's Islamist and pan-Arab policies in his opening speech. "The seventh congress will have special significance because it comes at a time when the party is waging a fierce war against the advocates of normalisation with the Zionist enemy," Shukri said. "The speech will affirm the party's strong unity, coherence and defence of Islamic and Arab causes."
Following Shukri's speech, Hussein will submit to the congress a report on the party's achievements over the last three years. The party's last congress was held in February 1995.
There have been reports of internal ideological differences dividing the party into two camps: supporters and opponents of Adel Hussein. The anti-Hussein camp, called the Front for the Reform of the Labour Party, is led by movie actor Hamdi Ahmed.
During a meeting of the party's higher committee on 3 April, a leaflet was circulated calling for greater democracy and liberalism. "The party should not be left under the control of a certain family [an allusion to Adel Hussein and his nephew, Magdi Hussein, the chief editor of Al-Shaab], which is primarily interested in tightening its grip on the party and orchestrating its activities to serve their interests," the leaflet said. It alleged that Hussein wanted to make himself the party's de-facto chairman and turn Shukri into an honourary head. "This family," the leaflet claimed, "has made the party more autocratic by denying young cadres a say in the party's affairs and policies."
Another leaflet, entitled "Who protects corruption in the Labour Party?" and circulated by Abdallah Abu Hussein, the party's former secretary for public relations, openly called for "purging the party of the Hussein family." Abu Hussein, who had been dismissed from his post by Adel Hussein, argued that the press campaigns launched by Al-Shaab were not only entirely unfounded but were also masterminded by Hussein to tighten his grip on the party and promote the chances of his re-election as secretary-general.
During the party's higher committee meeting, Hussein came under verbal attack from Hamdi Marzouk, a professor at Zagazig University's faculty of medicine. Marzouk charged that Hussein's group was using the party slogan -- "Islam is the solution"-- to serve personal interests. Hussein responded by urging his opponents to avoid personal disputes and stand firmly behind the party "in its holy battle against Agriculture Minister Youssef Wali and businessman Hussein Sabour and all advocates of normalising relations with Israel."
"The confrontations and campaigns which were led in the past by the Labour Party have reached a peak," Hussein said. "For this reason, it is no surprise that conspiracies are engineered every now and then to break up the party's unity, especially ahead of its seventh congress."
Ali Fath El-Bab, the party's only representative in the People's Assembly, told Al-Ahram Weekly that opposition to Hussein was minor. "The fact is that some government newspapers and magazines are trying to magnify internal disputes in order to create the impression that the party is about to fall apart," he said.
Meanwhile, Salah Bedeiwi, the author of the anti-Wali articles in Al-Shaab newspaper, was summoned on Tuesday by Prosecutor-General Raga'a El-Arabi to testify in connection with a libel complaint filed by Wali last week. Bedeiwi himself has filed his own complaint, accusing Wali of high treason. He claimed that Al-Shaab possesses all the documents necessary for implicating Wali in secret deals with the Israelis.
According to a report in Al-Shaab, lawyer Abdel-Halim Ramadan has joined the party's campaign by lodging a complaint against Wali, accusing him of donating 5,000 feddans to the Albert Einstein Foundation to turn it into an "Israeli settlement".
For his part, Wali, who also serves as secretary-general of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), testified last week before the prosecutor-general and denied Al-Shaab's charges.
