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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 28 Sep. - 4 Oct. 2000 Issue No. 501 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 28 Sep. - 4 Oct. 2000 Issue No. 501
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Elections Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters New eggs for old
By Hani Shukrallah
Campaigning for the new parliament is in full swing and, with judicial supervision and three weeks of polling in various parts of the country to look forward to, we are promised, if nothing much else, an interesting couple of months.
I may as well come out with my little heresy. I am not very excited about the difference "full" judicial supervision of the voting is likely to make to the composition of the forthcoming parliament. And this is not just, or even mainly, out of fear that Justice Ministry and police meddling will sabotage judicial supervision. Nor is it really a function of the many other items on the opposition parties' list of electoral grievances, including inadequate voter registers or restrictions on freedom of campaigning (which point is doubtless important in itself, since it concerns freedom of political activity in general, and not just at election time. It is, however, of questionable worth as far as winning a seat in parliament is concerned).
But before I reveal the real reason for my scepticism, I feel bound to make a passing reference to an editorial comment I read this week on the elections. The writer was responding to the opposition parties' fears and grievances regarding the fairness of the forthcoming elections. Conceding that there might have been electoral rigging in past elections, he nevertheless railed against the opposition for demanding further guarantees that no rigging will take place this time around. Why, he demanded, should they anticipate malpractice before the fact? Rather, they should wait until the elections were conducted, find out if rigging had taken place, and only then address the issue.
I am, as I have already confessed, something of a dispassionate observer with respect to this particular debate. Still, I found truly stunning the way the writer, with a few short strokes of his pen, demolished all epistemology and, along with it, the most fundamental basis of human existence. The relationship between experience, memory and knowledge was rent asunder. Each morning was made to hold the enthralling prospect of relearning anew the taste of one's breakfast egg.
While the issue of rigging may provide impetus for interesting new ideas to be raised in the course of editorial commentary, however, it plays only a very minor part in the election itself, at least as regards its effect on the political composition of parliament. As it happens -- and I suggest this on the basis of cumulatively learned and conceptually appropriated experience -- the ruling political party does not owe its overwhelming domination of parliament to electoral malpractice, however extensive or limited, but to the erosion of politics in both parliament and parliamentary elections. With some 3,000 NDP members running as independents and the ruling party fielding a full ticket of 444 official candidates, the Arabic-language press has already dubbed the current campaign as one in which "the NDP is running against the NDP" -- basically a repeat of the 1995 elections, except for the fact that even more NDP members are running against their party's official list this time around.
High-ranking state officials, I believe, would genuinely like to see greater opposition representation in the forthcoming parliament. Not much greater, perhaps, but greater all the same. One wonders, nevertheless, whether it can be done -- short, that is, of extensive rigging in favour of the opposition.
The paradox to top all paradoxes, however, is that the contraction of politics in parliament, the elections and the country as a whole has corresponded to a growing scramble over parliamentary seats, expressed both in the number of candidates contesting the elections and the fierceness of the competition. In 1995, some 4,000 competed, almost double the number for the previous poll in 1990. The number rose again by a couple of hundred for this year's election. The 1995 poll was, moreover, one of the most violent in Egyptian parliamentary history, with most of the violence accounted for by NDP versus NDP battles.
Why should members of the same party, who presumably adhere to the same political platform, compete so widely and so intensely for a seat in parliament? Excessive zeal to eloquently advocate their party's political agenda within parliament does not, unfortunately, provide us with a convincing answer -- if the images of empty benches and dozing members of the outgoing assembly are anything to go by.
The answer, in my view, lies in the fact that, in this age of economic liberalisation, parliament is increasingly becoming a site of business rather than politics. Electoral contests have become an extension of competition in the marketplace rather than in the political sphere, and constituents have come to look to their representatives for patronage rather than political representation. And ultimately, where patronage is concerned, who can compete with the state?
