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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 May 1999 Issue No. 429 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 May 1999 Issue No. 429
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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 Books Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters 'Hussein group' faces rising opposition
By Gamal Essam El-DinThe Islamist-oriented Labour Party is facing hard times. Five journalists with the party's bi-weekly mouthpiece Al-Shaab will stand trial on Saturday on charges of slandering Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture Youssef Wali and banker Hussein Sabbour. The party is also threatened with serious internal division, with a considerable number of prominent members stepping up a successful war against the so-called Hussein group -- an allusion to the party's secretary-general, Adel Hussein, and his nephew, Magdi Hussein, chief editor of Al-Shaab. The dissenters raised enough support to organise an extraordinary party congress on 20 May.
The division, which surfaced on the eve of the party's executive committee elections last month, is led by Ahmed Shukri, the 61-year-old son of the party's chairman, Ibrahim Shukri, as well as Nagi El-Shehabi, former assistant to the party's secretary-general, and actor Hamdi Ahmed. Ahmed Shukri and El-Shehabi held a meeting last week to voice objections to the results of the executive committee elections. The meeting, held in the town of Hehia in the Sharkiya governorate last week, was surprisingly attended by a large number of the party's representatives in seven governorates.
The dissenting camp, called the Front for the Reform of the Labour Party, decided to withdraw confidence from the party's secretary-general Adel Hussein "for his prime role in rigging the results of the executive committee elections." Ahmed Shukri, Nagi El-Shehabi, Hamdi Ahmed and Ali Abul-Naga, the party's secretary-general for Nasr City in eastern Cairo, were elected as party "leaders" for an interim period.
The dissenters said that they managed to get the approval of more than 600 party members to organise the extraordinary general congress. According to Abul-Naga, a quorum of 400 members is required to hold an extraordinary congress. Abul-Naga said that a message was sent to Ibrahim Shukri, asking him to dismiss Hussein and withdraw his recongition of the newly-elected executive committee. He added that Ibrahim Shukri will be invited to attend the congress. "If he decides to turn down the invitation, the extraordinary congress will be obliged to elect a new chairman," Abul-Naga said.
At the conclusion of last week's meeting, the anti-Hussein camp issued a statement blaming Ibahim Shukri for his failure to take decisive action against Hussein's "terrorist" practices in the Labour Party. "Ibrahim Shukri was so negative about the rigging of the executive committee elections, although opposition parties complain every now and then that parliamentary elections are rigged by state authorities," the statement said. It described Ibrahim Shukri "as the wife who is the last to know about her husband's infidelity." The opposing camp also accused Hussein of illegal practices, the last of which was receiving money (LE150,000) from foreign sources to foot the bill of the hotel in which the executive committee elections were held.
As part of efforts to escalate their campaign, Ahmed Shukri and El-Shehabi also joined forces with 16 party members in filing a lawsuit with Cairo's Abdeen court, charging Hussein with rigging the committee elections and demanding a vote re-count. The anti-Hussein camp alleged that as many as 1,688 votes were removed by Hussein from the counting process because they were not in his favour. The court decided to appoint "an expert" to check the ballot boxes which are currently being kept at Ibrahim Shukri's home.
For his part, Ahmed Shukri, in a message to his father, said the executive committee elections were rife with rigging. "I hope you will take the measures necessary to address this dangerous situation in order not to lose your credibility. We should be standing on solid ground when we urge the government to hold upright elections," Shukri told his father.
El-Shehabi told Al-Ahram Weekly that the intention to hold an extraordinary congress on 20 May was prompted by Ibrahim Shukri's refusal to take action against Hussein. "Adel Hussein and his advocates gave themselves the upper hand in supervising the party's recent elections. We objected to him and told Ibrahim Shukri about it. All we ask now is a vote re-count. Why do they refuse? It was clear from the beginning that the Hussein group would insist on their undemocratic practices and leave the party prey to the Muslim Brotherhood and members of Islamist groups," El-Shehabi said.
Ibrahim Shukri, for his part, has tried his best in the last few days to save the party from division. He has toured various governorates to raise support for the party's new executive committee and maintain internal unity.
In one of these tours, Shukri strongly denied that the Labour Party had fallen prey to the Hussein group or the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. "The Labour Party has a platform to which all members are committed. This does not mean that it is free from certain ideological wings or currents, but I refuse to have them dubbed as Muslim Brotherhood members or leftists," Shukri said. He also emphasised that the lawsuit filed with the Abdeen court will get nowhere because "it is the Shura Council's Political Parties Committee that is solely and exclusively empowered to decide on internal disputes in opposition parties." Shukri, however, emphasised that his son Ahmed was deceived by the anti-Hussein camp and, for this reason, "he should be considered a non-conformist."
Meanwhile, the Hussein group has tightened its grip on the party by completely ignoring the dissenting camp's counter-attack and focusing instead on its long-term campaign against "the advocates of normalisation with Israel." Ibrahim Shukri emphasised that Al-Shaab journalists have all the documents necessary to support their charges against Wali and Sabbour.
