3 - 9 May 2001
Issue No.532
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 3 - 9 May 2001 Issue No.532 |
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No women, no Copts
In the past few days Shura Council nominations both commenced and ended, without much ado or any evident excitement. It is as if this council, which comprises one half of the legislative body and must oversee and approve the passing of fundamental laws pertaining to the constitution is viewed as fulfilling only a supplementary and cosmetic role.
Neither the National Democratic Party (NDP), nor any of the other political parties, appear to pay the Shura Council sufficient attention; most, indeed, make no distinction between it and the Specialised National Councils, mandated to study particular issues but without any legislative weight attached to ensuing recommendations.
The Shura Council elections, it is important to note, will cover no more than 88 seats, i.e. half of the council, and will be conducted, under judicial supervision, in three stages, much like the last People's Assembly elections. But since the Shura Council is not as important to the NDP and its government as the People's Assembly, it is likely that most of the errors and failures with which the People's Assembly elections were beset will be repeated in the latter.
In the People's Assembly elections competition among NDP members occurred in most constituencies, with the party itself failing to nominate the most competent and most popular members. They were then forced to nominate themselves as independent candidates running against official NDP candidates.
In order to avoid a rerun of this scenario, the NDP has resorted to the notion of an electoral college, an American practice used to limit the number of any one party's candidates to one nominee per constituency, theoretically ensuring that each party will boast a unified front. The notion was implemented, however, with the college restricted to party secretaries and members of the People's Assembly and the Shura Council, effectively limiting nominations to a small cabal of party members. What is even stranger is that the NDP, in many cases, failed to respect the choices of its electoral college and selected other candidates instead.
It was only natural, as a result, that those excluded should nominate themselves as independent candidates. If the party does not respect the rules of the democratic game, then why, they will have argued, should they. The total number of candidates has thus reached 800, approximately 10 to each constituency. This is not to mention those who were prevented by the security apparatus from nominating themselves, actions that cast an unpleasant shadow over the process. And inexplicably the ruling party, which never misses a chance to expound on national unity and women's rights, failed to nominate any Copts or women to any of the constituencies, thus completely ignoring the call of the National Council for Women (NCW) for increased female representation in the political arena. Perhaps the NCW did not exercise enough pressure on the NDP or the People's Assembly (most of whose members belong to the NDP) to include women; a total of 22 female candidates from outside the NDP were nominated.
The lack of excitement about the Shura Council elections on the part of the NDP and some opposition parties is clearly reflected in the stance of the electorate itself. To an even greater extent, the consensus on the street seems to be that the elections typify the democratic process in Egypt, a process that has evidently failed to benefit from accumulated experience or to liberate the political system from one-party dominance.
What vitality or efficiency might result if the opposition parties managed to create a powerful lobby within the Shura Council is something we can only guess at.
Yet in the absence of the kind of competition generated by the success of non-NDP nominees in the last elections, and considering the general lack of faith in the role of the Shura Council, it could well be beneficial for the NDP to receive yet another shock this time round.
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