10 - 16 May 2001
Issue No.533
|
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 10 - 16 May 2001 Issue No.533 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
A quarter century on
The chinks that opened in the political arena 25 years ago remain just that, argues Medhat El-Zahed*
This April marked exactly a quarter of a century since the late President Anwar Sadat took the first steps towards political party plurality by dividing the Arab Socialist Union (ASU) into three platforms, representing the left, right and centre of the political spectrum. It was on this basis that the elections of 1976 were held.
It is paradoxical that of these three platforms only the left-wing Tagammu is around to celebrate its silver anniversary. That this is so is symptomatic of aspects of the initial period of this process of pluralisation, dominated by an executive authority that formulated a general legal framework -- including the Political Party Law and the Party Committee -- intended to restrict the formation and activities of political parties.
During this period, though, new parties with significant grassroots support emerged, such as the New Wafd and the Nasserist Party, while others, such as the Communist and Centre (Wasat) parties were outlawed. The new parties that were almost guaranteed approval, though, tended to be small, family-based affairs, including such bizarre groupings as the Umma Party, headed by a professional palm reader who boasted of founding a training school for barbers to combat unemployment.
One imagines that the profile of developing political party pluralism would have been free of some of its less salubrious images had the right to form political parties enjoyed constitutional and other legal guarantees. Then, political parties could have come and gone of their own accord and we might have dispensed with the appearance of parties as covers for political fronts or else powerful families.
Yet not only have appeals to deregulate party political life gone unheeded, political life in general has remained depressingly stagnant. Labour and the professional syndicates are confined by a centralised hierarchy inherited from the Nasser era, while some professional syndicates were sequestered following attempts by the Muslim Brotherhood to control and politicise them. Political activity is banned in universities and peaceful demonstrations are prohibited without official authorisation.
In spite of these conditions, though, it is the political parties themselves that have come under attack, accused of being responsible for the aridity that afflicts political life. They have been charged with rigid party structures and leaderships, with the failure to establish grassroots support and attract new blood to their ranks. They have been accused of not reaching out to the young. Yet all of this is impossible given the environment in which they are supposed to operate.
Several trends have emerged in the course of the quest to invigorate participatory politics. One school of thought advocates modernising political parties through the upward promotion of appropriately skilled managerial and organisational personnel, a technocratic approach. Others have appealed for the need for opposition forces to form a united front to press for political reform. A third trend marches beneath the banner of "Islam is the solution," rubric for a return to fundamentalist principles and the rhetoric of holy struggle. Finally, there are those who find in the idea of activating civil society a magic formula for progress, in spite of the fact that many organisations of civil society serve, in effect, simply to reproduce political and civic backwardness.
It appears, then, that the vitality of political pluralism is contingent upon the ability of democratic forces in society to crystallise a set of demands, to organise democratically to express these interests and to stimulate a democratic consciousness that steers society clear of apathy and terrorism. Certainly, such a development would have a profound and positive impact on party political life.
*The writer is a journalist with Al-Ahali newspaper.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page