8 - 14 November 2001
Issue No.559
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 8 - 14 November 2001 Issue No.559 |
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Out on a limb
A row within the hitherto marginal Misr Party has brought the number of suspended political parties up to seven
Acting with surprising speed, the semi-governmental Political Parties Committee, decided last week to freeze the activities of the Arab Socialist Misr (Egypt) Party, reports Gamal Essam El-Din. The committee, established under the Political Parties law (No.40 for 1977), is charged with the licensing and overseeing of political parties.
The swift suspension of the Misr Party follows the eruption of an internal power struggle initiated by the party's secretary-general, Wahid El-Uqsuri. El-Uqsuri, a lawyer, was infuriated by a decision taken by party Chairman Gamal Rabie to appoint Wafd Party renegades Ayman Nour, Mohamed Farid Hassanein, and Seif Mahmoud as the party's representatives in parliament. El-Uqsuri led a revolt against Rabie and proclaimed himself party leader.
The committee said in a statement that it had no option but to freeze the party's activities "until the two contenders reach a settlement either by consensus or by resorting to the judiciary." The decision brings the number of frozen political parties to seven, out of a total of 16.
MPs Nour, Hassanein and Mahmoud were expelled from the Wafd Party in March and June for opposing the policies of party Chairman Nouman Goma'a. According to circulating reports, Nour, a 37-year-old journalist and MP for Cairo's downtown district of Bab Al-Shaariya, approached Rabie six months ago and the two allegedly concluded a secret deal. In exchange for a donation of LE1.75 million by Nour and Hassanein to the Misr Party, the two would become the party's spokesmen in parliament.
Since his expulsion from the Wafd Party in March, Nour has approached many political parties to act as their spokesman in parliament without success. He, together with businessman Rami Lakah, first approached Abdel- Moneim Al-Aasar, chairman of the Green Party. They allegedly offered a hefty amount of LE1.5 million in return for becoming the party's parliamentary representatives. But the alleged deal was disclosed by the press and both were spurned as "nouveau riche" out to buy their political clout.
Nour announced last week that his efforts to become a party spokesman in parliament were motivated by his interest in actively participating in parliamentary debates. "It is quite difficult for independent MPs to take the floor in parliament," Nour said. "Parliament's internal regulations give the assembly speaker sweeping powers to manipulate parliamentary debates the way he likes, but they compel him to give priority to representatives of political parties." Many MPs have asked for modifying the internal regulations to give independent MPs greater freedom of speech, but such calls have fallen on deaf ears.
Circulating reports claimed that Rabie sent a memo last week to Assembly Speaker Fathi Sorour, informing him that the Misr Party has appointed Nour, Hassanein and Seif as the party's representatives in parliament. But the memo was rejected because the three did not run in the elections as Misr Party members, the reports said. Nour's adversaries further claim that the Misr Party does not have the right to appoint representatives in parliament because it did not even field a single candidate in the 2000 parliamentary elections.
Rabie says that he was approached by Nour as long as six months ago, when he was working to revitalise the party's activities. "I agreed that Nour would be appointed as the party's deputy chairman, spokesman in parliament, and editor-in-chief of its mouthpiece," Rabi said. The Misr Party used to have a mouthpiece by the name of Misr Newspaper, but due to lack of funds, the paper ceased to be published around four years ago.
The Misr Party was established in 1977 to serve as the government party under the leadership of then Prime Minister Mamdouh Salem. Salem resigned the following year when the late President Anwar El-Sadat decided to establish the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). The majority of Misr Party members defected to join El- Sadat's NDP, but Rabie and some 800 other members decided to remain in the Misr Party. Now a fairly obscure political body, the last time the Misr Party was active in domestic politics was in 1994, when Rabie attended the National Dialogue Conference. The conference was sponsored by President Hosni Mubarak following a flurry of terrorist acts that threatened to disrupt national unity.
The decision of the Political Parties Committee to freeze the Misr Party has been severely criticised by political activists. The committee is widely considered a government tool used to control political activity. The six- member committee is made up of three cabinet ministers and three legal consultants: Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Kamal El-Shazli, Minister of Justice Farouk Seif El-Nasr, Interior Minister Habib El-Adli, Rifaat Abdel-Moneim (previously with the Administrative Prosecution Authority), Mohamed Hamdi (previously with Cairo's Appeals Court) and Youssef Shalabi (previously with the State Council).
According to the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), over the last two years the committee has frozen six political parties citing internal disputes as the reason. Furthermore, the committee has refused to license another nine parties. Since it was established in 1977, the committee has only licensed seven parties; the remainder obtaining their licences on the authority of court orders.
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