Gearing up for September

President Mubarak's address to the nation on the 52nd anniversary of the 1952 Revolution raised hopes of impending political reforms. Gamal Essam El-Din reports

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In his first address to the nation since recovering from back surgery in Germany last month, President Hosni Mubarak vowed to focus on activating more public participation in politics. The 23 July speech, marking the 52nd anniversary of the 1952 July Revolution, featured Mubarak emphasising that the new cabinet reshuffle was primarily aimed at ushering Egypt into a new phase of greater public participation in political and partisan life. This goal, Mubarak said, goes hand in hand with other objectives aimed at modernising Egypt, opening up to the outside world, and achieving peace in the Middle East.

Although Mubarak did not elaborate on the specific plans being mapped out to reactivate political life, several leading figures from the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) have been eager to do so.

According to NDP Secretary- General Safwat El-Sherif, the party's second annual conference will feature radical amendments to major political legislation: the press law (96/1996); the law on the exercise of political rights (73/1956), the political parties law (40/1977), and the professional syndicates law (100/1993).

Amending the press law, El- Sherif said, was aimed at ridding the penal code of imprisonment penalties for publication offences. This amendment was proposed by President Mubarak during the Press Syndicate's General Conference last February. Jail terms would be replaced with hefty financial fines for offending publications. Some however, such as journalist and Nasserist-oriented MP Hamdeen Sabahi, expressed their doubts that jail terms would be eliminated altogether. They might still be mandated for certain libel cases involving, for instance, "defaming the image of the president of the republic by means of using slanderous words", Sabahi said.

It was also reported that a great many influential NDP members now advocate amending the constitution in order to turn the consultative Shura Council into a fully-fledged upper house of parliament with complete supervisory and legislative powers. Reinforcing the independence of the judiciary, and emphasising that Egypt's economic foundation is the market, rather than the socialist, system, would also be considered.

According to El-Sherif, who also heads the council, "it is in Egypt's interest to have a good and effective bicameral system. This will be a basic part of any future reforms, because it requires amending the constitution."

Gamal Mubarak, President Mubarak's 41- year-old son and the head of the NDP's influential Policy Secretariat, told Cairo University professors last week, however, that amending the constitution and revoking the emergency law were not on the NDP's reform agenda.

Mubarak's secretariat met yesterday to map out an agenda of the upcoming conference's political and economic reform suggestions. The meeting, which was attended by newly appointed Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, focussed on how the political laws mentioned would be amended.

While the opposition has long called for scrapping the 1956 law on exercising political rights, saying it had proven unsuccessful in safeguarding general elections against rigging, it remained unclear how the party planned to amend the two laws regulating the exercise of political rights and the setting up of new parties.

The opposition, according to leftist Tagammu Party Secretary-General Hussein Abdel-Razeq, wants a new law aimed at bringing elections under full judicial supervision. "We want a supreme judicial board to take charge of supervising the electoral process, even to the extent of excluding security forces from playing any role in any elections. This proved very successful in India," Abdel-Razeq said, "and we want to emulate it in Egypt."

El-Sherif would only go so far as to say that the party would be focussing on the necessity of creating a more efficient system for voter registration. He also said that the NDP was doing its best to ensure that the October 2005 elections would use a voting system based on people's "national ID number". El-Sherif said the system was "designed to bring an end to all the problems regarding voter registration and the voting process itself".

NDP Assistant Secretary-General and People's Assembly Affairs Minister Kamal El- Shazli, meanwhile, said, "relinquishing the individual candidacy system [currently in use] is not on the NDP's agenda of reforms". El- Shazli said, however, that changes were planned for the party's own "electoral- college" system. Many party members have complained that the American-style system has led to a proliferation of bribes and vote buying.

According to El-Sherif, the modifications to the electoral college system would provide more space for the party's younger members, who range in age from 18 to 30, and who account for 38.8 per cent of the NDP's total membership. Those above 60, El-Sherif said, comprise just 4 per cent of the party's ranks.

Party leaders were equally vague about the amendments being proposed for the political parties law. El-Shazli merely indicated that the changes would help provide more freedom and facilities for political parties.

The opposition, meanwhile, wants the political parties committee (which is solely empowered with licensing parties) to be revoked altogether. Abdel-Razeq said the committee, which is currently headed by El-Sherif, was largely to blame for the stagnation of Egyptian politics. "In his 23 July speech, President Mubarak vowed that participation in political life would be deepened. We believe that this will take place when this notorious committee is completely eliminated," he said.

Much ado is also being made about the potential conflict of interest between El-Sherif's appointment as chairman of the Shura Council and its affiliated Political Parties Committee, and his position as the NDP's secretary-general. "We think it is completely unfair to entrust the ruling party's secretary-general with having the final say on matters related to rival political parties," Abdel-Razeq said.

El-Sherif told October magazine that he does not head "the political parties committee... in my capacity as NDP secretary-general, but rather as a neutral person entrusted with implementing the political parties law."

Rumours that the September conference will feature a dramatic shake-up of the party's leadership have also surfaced -- despite the fact that the NDP's internal statutes mandate that these kinds of changes can only occur at the party's congress, which takes place every five years.

Informed NDP sources, meanwhile, predicted that Gamal Mubarak would be replacing El-Sherif as the party's secretary- general, while Nazif would likely become either a member of the politburo or the party's general secretariat.