4 -10 April 2002
Issue No.580
|
Al-Ahram Weekly Online 4 -10 April 2002 Issue No.580 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
NDP sweeps poll by default
To the opposition parties' dismay, Egypt's ruling NDP party has announced that at least 70 per cent of its candidates have already won next week's municipal elections unopposed. Gamal Essam El-Din reports
Kamal El-Shazli, minister of state for parliamentary affairs, announced on Sunday that at least 70 per cent of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) candidates have already won the upcoming 8 April municipal elections unopposed. El-Shazli, who is also the NDP's assistant secretary-general, added that the party would spare no effort in seeking to clinch the remaining 30 per cent of seats. "The high popularity of the NDP's candidates and their good reputation among citizens are the two major factors which have made the NDP's unopposed victory a foregone conclusion," El-Shazli said.
Opposition circles and political pundits, however, cried foul at the NDP's unopposed triumph. This triumph, they argued, is largely due to the NDP's long- time hegemony over the local administration sector and its rejection of full judicial supervision on the principal and auxiliary polling stations of municipal elections. "The passing in January of a law limiting judicial supervision was an early indicator that municipal elections will be manipulated to ensure that the NDP has an easy victory," said Hussein Abdel-Razek, secretary-general of the leftist Tagammu party.
When the deadline for candidate registration passed on 7 March, the number of registered candidates for the elections had reached a total of 60,280. This number dropped by 31 March to 59.708 after administrative courts disqualified some candidates from running for various reasons, ranging from dodging military service to illiteracy. The remainder are vying for 49,280 council seats at the village, district, town, city and governorate levels. Out of a total of 59,708 candidates, as many as 1,035 (1.7 per cent) are women. Of the 59,708 runners, 6,081 are competing for governorate seats, 15,674 for township seats, 7,195 for city seats, 2,627 for district seats and 28,131 for village seats.
At first, the NDP fielded 49,280 official candidates -- one for each seat. Later, however, the number of NDP candidates dropped to 48,106 (80.7 per cent). Almost two- thirds of this number have already won unopposed. Out of the remaining candidates who are not affiliated to the NDP, 10,568 are independents (17.7 per cent) and 1,034 (1.6 per cent) affiliate themselves to six opposition parties. The opposition candidates belong to the liberal-oriented Al- Wafd (758), the leftist Tagammu and Nasserists (215), as well as three relatively obscure parties (61).
Meanwhile, the banned Muslim Brotherhood announced on 26 February that it would boycott the municipal elections. Ma'moun El-Hodeibi, the Brotherhood's spokesman, described the municipal elections as "a comedy in which none of the Brotherhood members will be interested." The Brotherhood boycott protests against last January's NDP-proposed legislative amendment which limited judicial supervision of municipal elections. As a result, judges will oversee voting at only 298 principal polling stations, leaving another 37,410 auxiliary polling stations to the supervision of public sector and municipal authority employees.
In spite of their meagre prospects of success, opposition parties recently appealed to President Hosni Mubarak to stop security forces from manipulating the municipal elections in the NDP's favour. Interior Minister Habib El-Adli commented on 19 March that the security forces' role was to ensure that municipal elections were conducted with integrity. "To achieve this objective, security forces will be ready to confront all attempts at blighting the voting process with undemocratic practices," El-Adli said.
In selecting its candidates to run officially in municipal elections, the NDP adopted what is called "the electoral college" system. This system gives party members the power to nominate candidates by open ballot. In its first year of adoption, however, the system created deep rifts in the NDP's ranks as provincial secretaries fought MPs over the imposition of certain names on the party lists of candidates.
The role of elected local councils in democratising political life, achieving the state's development objectives and improving public services, has long been a subject of fierce debate in the People's Assembly and academic research centres. The elected municipal councils form, along with what are known as "executive municipalities," Egypt's local administration system. The elected local councillors' term of office is four years but can be extended for a further year by the President. The annual session of elected local councils must last for at least ten months. It usually opens in the beginning of September and closes at the end of June. The performance of elected local councils is regulated by the Local Administration's law no. 43 of 1979 which states that the role of the elected local councils, or the local peoples' councils, is to supervise the executive municipalities and act as mini-parliaments in different provinces.
This takes the form of directing comments and inquiries to provincial governors and the staff of executive municipal units. Members of elected local councils are also empowered to ask provincial governors for periodical progress reports and suggest plans about local public utilities and services. A study conducted by the Al- Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPS) emphasised, however, that the elected local councils have always fallen short of achieving their supposed role.
This, the study said, was largely due to the NDP's hegemony over both elected local councils and executive municipalities. "The fact that the NDP's members dominate the local administration system has greatly incapacitated the supervisory roles of the elected local councils over the executive municipalities. As a result, members of the elected councils either decline to attend sessions or pursue their personal interests. This leads to a serious proliferation of corrupt practices and a deterioration in public services, especially in the area of maintaining restoration work," the study said.
Recent debates in parliament's housing committee showed that as many as 6,299 members of elected local councils had not attended any meetings over the past four years. The ACPS study strongly recommended a reduction in the NDP's grip on the local administration system as a basic step towards fighting nationwide corruption, improving the lives of ordinary citizens and promoting democratisation.
© 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