Parliamentary jostling

Fatemah Farag reads a press focussed on pre-parliamentary electioneering

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As the press welcomed the re-election of Galal Aref as head of the Press Syndicate (a success perceived by many who wrote in the press this week as a victory for the anti-corruption platform) it remained pre-occupied with the politics of the ruling party. And while Al-Ahram, for one, made much ado in its banner on 28 September hailing the "beginning of the era of the elected president", most focussed their attention on the dynamics of the National Democratic Party's (NDP) congress.

In a one-page article by Mahmoud Bakri in Al-Osbou' he put forward what he described as the "thorny questions": namely whether the battle between the old and new guard had come to an end and whether President [Hosni] Mubarak was going back on his electoral promises. "They [new guard] held the keys to the [presidential] campaign," says Bakri who goes on to point out that this fact would have suggested radical changes during this week's NDP congress. "But what happened came as a total surprise and contrary to all expectations and in fact ended to a great extent all the talk about differences within the party." Bakri goes on to surmise that the seeming unity is an attempt by the party to strengthen its position in the upcoming parliamentary elections which are expected by everyone to be challenging to the extreme.

In Sawt Al-Ummah, Wael El-Ibrashi goes as far as to describe the dynamics of NDP politics as a "marriage of convenience between the new guard -- Gamal Mubarak and his men -- and the old guard -- Safwat El-Sherif, Fathi Sorour, Kamal El-Shazli and their men, with the aim of preparing for the upcoming parliamentary elections." El-Ibrashi goes on to argue that the new guard "does not have enough political expertise and experience of manoeuvering to make them capable of forging the elections and undertaking the so-called 'dirty jobs' necessary. They discovered that forging the will of the people is a job that has its specialists and for which the new 'students' are not ready."

However, Abdullah El-Sinawi in this week's Al-Arabi says, "It seems that Egypt, with all its political powers, has jumped high in the air and must come down in accordance with the rules of nature and politics without being sure, as it hangs in the air of confused interactions, whether it has ground to land on and whether that landing will be safe." El-Sinawi questions whether the upcoming parliamentary elections could be that ground and claims "In the final hours before the president was sworn in, there was a heated debate in the corridors of power regarding whether it would be possible for the president to emit a positive signal in his speech before parliament to the political community which is volatile and unsure of his seriousness regarding his campaign promises. And in the end it was decided -- under pressure of the leadership of the NDP -- not to come near how legislative elections should be run, since any change could seriously affect the luck of the ruling party." Which is why, claims El-Sinawi, the president's speech was devoid of any specific promises "as if it is a continuation of the four previous republics, as if nothing new ever happens in Egypt. It is depressing and in any case a sign that dangers loom in a horizon filled with turbulence."

Which may be why Abbas El-Tarabili in Al-Wafd on 28 September says, "by all means the main opposition parties -- Wafd, Tagammu, and Nasserist -- are the final attempt to save democracy after the painful experience of the presidential elections." The ability of these parties to unify their positions in the upcoming elections, says El-Tarabili, will limit -- to an extent -- the monopoly of the ruling party "over the lives of Egyptians".

But Abdullah Kamal in Rose El-Youssef complains that the opposition has no imagination regarding the solutions to our problems and plans for the future. Instead they only talk of "ready- made foreign patterns" arguing that progress does not mean we must "bring down the regime and start anew".

Instead, Kamal suggests that what we really want is a "strong president -- as is the case now -- subject to constitutional accountability. [A president] who has the power to protect the state in a newly-born democratic environment."