The by-elections
By
Salama A Salama
By-elections in 23 constituencies offered an opportunity for the NDP to attempt to restore trust in the parliamentary system as well as its own credibility. Instead the ruling party has opted to use the elections as a means of strengthening its control over the People's Assembly and the Shura Council. The mentality of monopoly endemic in the ranks of the party's old guard has not changed.
The first mistake committed by the leadership of the NDP was to accept the resignation of those MPs who had been shown to have evaded military service. The legal ruling on the status of the MPs was clear. They were ineligible to sit in parliament, they should never have been nominated as candidates in the first place, and they were in no position to resign from positions they were never entitled to hold. Yet the NDP insisted on coaxing resignations out of the 17 MPs involved when they had in effect already been dismissed from parliament. The reason behind the manouevring was to open nominations in the constituencies concerned rather than restrict the list of candidates to those who had participated in the original elections. That way other NDP candidates -- many related, married or affiliated to the dismissed MPs -- have the opportunity to run in the seats.
The second mistake was for the Ministry of Interior to allow the nomination of new candidates. The suits that followed that decision ended up in the Supreme Administrative Court which issued a final decision prohibiting any new nominees and limiting candidates to those from the 2000 elections. The six remaining by-elections have been caused by the death of sitting members or, in one case, the member being sentenced to a prison term.
The NDP would compound its mistakes if it supports the appeals now lodged with courts of first instance attempting to overrule the decision of the Supreme Administrative Court. The appeals are clearly intended only to delay the final ruling by the administrative judiciary and the election of members whose membership is contested.
I do not suppose for a moment that the NDP wanted to reach this point. The final result of what has happened will inevitably be a loss of credibility for the party and for the electoral process as a whole. At a time when the NDP is talking so much about the beginning of a new era of political participation based on a respect for democracy such a disfiguring of its own image is hardly something to court.
What recent events seem to indicate is a complete absence of awareness and a remarkable scarcity of people capable of intelligent political practice.
The by-elections could have served to reinforce the principles that underlie any multi-party system. Furthering that cause, rather than securing miniscule party advantage, should have dictated the NDP's actions. Instead, the image of the emerging leadership within the party now looks set to be tarnished with the same brush as the old guard.
What harm could possibly result from the NDP losing a couple of seats here, a couple there, especially when the return on such losses would have been a strengthening of the spirit of liberalism to which the NDP, in its rhetoric at least, avows it is committed?
For faith to be placed in a democratic system ready to develop and take off requires more than statements to that effect. It requires action, on the ground. That opportunity has now been missed.
