14 - 20 March 2002
Issue No.577
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 14 - 20 March 2002 Issue No.577 |
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NDP versus NDP -- again
Opposition parties have appealed to President Hosni Mubarak to prevent security forces from manipulating next month's municipal elections in favour of the ruling party. Gamal Essam El-Din reports
When the deadline for candidate registration in next month's municipal elections passed on 7 March, the number of candidates who registered for the elections had reached a total of 60,168 people. Not as excessive a total as it sounds: they are vying for a staggering 49,280 seats on councils at the village, district and governorate levels.
The ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) has fielded 49,280 official candidates -- one for each seat. Kamal El-Shazli, the NDP's assistant secretary-general, has revealed that as many as 80,000 NDP members wanted to run as official candidates. El-Shazli threatened the 30,000 who were not offered official candidacy with expulsion from the party's ranks if they ran as independents.
The NDP's determination to field candidates for all seats has sent shock- waves through opposition circles. Opposition parties strongly believe that two factors have recently conspired against them, making their winning seats in next month's municipal elections a daunting task, if not a mission impossible.
The first is last January's NDP- supported law, which limited the extent to which the judiciary can supervise municipal elections.
The opposition parties and the banned Muslim Brotherhood, which strongly objected to the law, said complete judicial supervision was a basic necessity to ensure that municipal elections be given the stamp of integrity.
The lack of full judicial supervision, they added, would surely give security forces and NDP-affiliated provincial governors a free hand to manipulate municipal elections in favour of the ruling party.
"A landslide NDP victory in these elections will kill any hopes for either democratising municipalities or stemming the tide of corruption in this vital sector, which is entrusted with addressing the daily needs of ordinary citizens," Opposition MPs said in a statement last January.
The second factor is the NDP's decision to field candidates for all seats, which will make it difficult for the opposition to win any seats at all.
This, according to Wafd Party chairman, Noaman Goma'a, flies in the face of the announcement by the NDP's assistant secretary-general Kamal El- Shazli. El-Shazli had stated that opposition and independent candidates were welcome to join the race in free and democratic elections.
"The Wafd party appeals to President Hosni Mubarak to intervene to prevent security forces and provincial governors from manipulating municipal elections in favour of the NDP. Some narrow-minded leading NDP officials still think that the ruling party should compete in all constituencies and win all seats even if this comes at the expense of impartiality and democratisation," Goma'a said.
Hussein Abdel-Razek, secretary of the leftist Tagammu party's political committee, described El-Shazli's threats to expel NDP members who run independently of the party's ranks as hollow.
"Such threats were voiced several times ahead of the elections for the People's Assembly and Shura Councils but at no time were they heeded by the party's membership," Abdel-Razek said.
Abdel-Razek argued that the main competition in next month's municipal elections would be between the NDP's 49,820 official candidates and its 30,000 excluded members, or NDP- independent candidates.
"These undemocratic practices, coupled with heavy-handed intervention by security forces, will make municipal elections a silly battle for opposition parties to run in," Abdel- Razek said.
Although there are no exact figures about how many candidates are being fielded by opposition parties, early indicators show that the number of opposition hopefuls cannot possibly exceed 2,000 -- or 10 per cent of the total number of runners. They belong to 13, out of a total of 16, opposition parties. The banned Muslim Brotherhood decided last month to boycott elections in protest over the curtailed judicial supervision.
Mustafa Abdel-Qader, minister of state for local development, revealed that opposition parties have not fielded any candidates at all in several governorates such as North and South Sinai, Marsa Matruh and the Red Sea. This, Abdel-Qader added, will result in the NDP winning around 85 per cent of overall seats completely unopposed.
In selecting its candidates to officially run in municipal elections, the NDP adopted what is called "the electoral college" system. This system, which was adopted as part of an internal reform process designed on the eve of the NDP's unprecedented defeat in the 2000 parliamentary elections, gives party members at all the different levels the power to nominate candidates by open ballot.
In the hectic hours before official nominations for candidates closed, differences emerged between NDP provincial secretaries and deputies in parliament. NDP MPs did their best to cajole the party's members into voting for certain candidates at the expense of others. The MPs were trying to exclude those candidates who stood against them in the 2000 parliamentary elections -- and replace them with their sons or relatives.
Local newspapers began to argue that the electoral college system, when entrusted to NDP MPs, had turned into a system for settling old scores with their enemies in provincial districts and governorates.
The war to get nominated onto official NDP lists heated up further, even after the door for candidate registration was closed on 7 March. The excluded NDP members filed as many appeals as possible with courts, attempting to contest the validity of many of their selected colleagues on the party's official list of candidates. In these appeals, the excluded NDP members alleged that many of the party's official candidates are not eligible to run in elections on the grounds that they had dodged military service. In Giza governorate, for example, 13 NDP candidates have already been excluded for failing to prove that they had completed military service.
For their part, NDP leaders describe the adoption of the electoral college system for local elections as a landmark step on the road to democratising the party's internal structures. A major feature of NDP official lists is that they now include many female candidates, for the first time. Between 400 and 500 women were included on NDP lists in 26 governorates.
Furthermore, informed NDP sources said that the number of new candidates on the party's lists reached 40 per cent this time round. This, they claimed, was part of a sustained effort to reinvigorate the party and inject new blood into the arteries of local councils.
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