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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 16 - 22 November 2000 Issue No.508 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 16 - 22 November 2000 Issue No.508
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Modern is as modern votes
By Hala Mustafa *
This year's parliamentary elections are the fairest and cleanest we have held in Egypt since the beginning of political pluralism in 1976. The reason? They are the first to take place under full judicial supervision of all polling stations in accordance with presidential decree 167 calling for the implementation of the Supreme Constitutional Court's ruling to this effect. The importance of this presidential decree is twofold. It has given a significant boost to democratisation, at the heart of which lies the electoral process, and it has demonstrated our government's capacity for autonomous self-renovation -- for it is important to stress here that the recent changes took place at the government's own initiative, and not in response to external pressure. These elections were also the most competitive we have ever had, with over 4,000 candidates representing a broad spectrum of political forces in the running.
Still, the results bring to the fore several political and social issues that transcend the procedural and legal aspects of voting. Perhaps the most crucial is the poor state of political parties, a fact that manifested itself with growing clarity at each successive stage in the process. Because the National Democratic Party (NDP) had only won 113 seats by the end of the second stage, it was forced to take on board 120 victors who had run as independents, albeit on an NDP platform, in order to bring its total seats up to 233 of the 284 seats contested in the first and second phases. For the opposition parties, the results were dismal. The Wafd and Tagammu parties won only four seats each, the Nasserist Party only one and the other 11 parties none at all. It is also telling that some of the 15 parties, most of which remain relatively small and insignificant, fielded only two candidates to cover the 222 constituencies, as was the case with the Wifaq (National Reconciliation) Party.
Egyptian political parties have long been prey to severe structural problems, the cumulative effect of which has been to undermine their performance, above all in the balloting process as the polls have shown. It takes significant dynamism for a political party to overcome its internal problems, systematically improve its organisational vitality and effectively extend and mobilise its support base. This dynamism does not exist in the Egyptian parties, all of which lack an early warning system to help them pinpoint their deficiencies in time. In modern political party systems, the development of a party's organisational structure is an ongoing process; in Egypt, it appears that this process begins and ends with the establishment of the party.
It is only natural that this shortcoming would manifest itself in the ruling party and the opposition in different ways. A ruling party that has remained in power for a relatively long period is often vulnerable to rigidity and stultification. This phenomenon does not apply to the NDP alone; nor is it intrinsically related to a particular level of democratic development. It surfaced in the Liberal Democratic Party that remained in power in Japan from the end of World War II until the late 1970s, in the Indian Congress Party, which ruled for a similar length of time, in the Labour Party that headed Israel's successive coalition governments from 1949 to 1977, and in the Mexican Revolutionary Party that remained in control for more than half a century and only moved into the opposition this year following its electoral defeat.
In general, opposition parties strive to increase their base of support and improve their standing among voters with an eye to reaching power. Frequently, however, after a long spell in the opposition, a certain lassitude sets in, and instead of seeking to build upon past strengths these parties content themselves with vying against one another, or succumb to internal conflicts that sap their vitality. This phenomenon has affected the opposition parties in Egypt and has affected their membership and their bases of popular support.
The crisis that afflicts party life in Egypt is not unique, but there are certain features that distinguish it. The party system in Egypt operates in a very traditional environment, in which considerations of religion and kinship prevail over political and ideological affiliations. In such an environment it is difficult to apply modern concepts of political mobilisation, for if parties are to draw grass-root support at all they must adapt to traditional modes of affiliation. This is not easy either, because it requires avenues that are generally only open to the ruling party, the most important being the ability to attract influential personalities who have made their presence felt in particular areas because of the services they have provided their constituencies or because of their connections.
The influence of traditional modes of affiliation was obvious in the recent elections, which saw an average of 20 candidates competing in constituencies where two would have sufficed. This phenomenon, moreover, does not apply solely to Upper Egypt, as is commonly believed, for while it may be more pronounced there it still prevails in the north and the Canal Zone as well as in many parts of Cairo and Alexandria, particularly those that have witnessed high rates of rural-urban migration and where migrant conglomerations have come to form large and influential constituencies.
The prevalence of traditional over political modes of affiliation explains why, for example, voters would vote for a member of the NDP who was running as an independent over an officially NDP-nominated candidate. These ballots were not necessarily votes against the NDP, but rather votes against the NDP candidate as an individual with particular family connections. The prevalence of traditional affiliations also explains why the Islamists made a stronger showing in the elections than the other opposition parties. The religious factor naturally has an especially strong appeal in a society as devout as ours.
Nevertheless, the recent elections also gave indications of the slow transition to a more modern society. One of the most salient was the victory of Nariman El-Daramli in Sohag, in the heart of Upper Egypt. In the first round of elections, she came out ahead of nine other candidates, all of them men and one the NDP candidate; then she scored 25,700 votes versus her rival's 10,000 in the second round. Similarly, in the Delta governorate of Damietta, another woman, Azza El-Kashef, beat her 10 competitors (among them an Islamist) in the first round. Perhaps another sign of the change taking place is that the only veiled candidate in these elections, Intisar Helmi in Tanta, obtained only 55 votes.
Of course, the transition from a traditional to a modern society is a slow and erratic process. Nevertheless, the more the force of society's traditional components wanes, the more possible it will be to modernise Egyptian political life -- and the more instrumental political parties will become in the process of democratic transformation.
*The writer is an expert at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
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