'Restless' majority

Omayma Abdel-Latif explores the price the National Democratic Party may have to pay to keep its majority in the parliamentary assembly intact

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Addressing the People's Assembly on Monday, President Hosni Mubarak said that presidential and parliamentary elections marked the end of an era in Egypt, and the beginning of a new one. His statement was also an accurate reflection of the situation inside the National Democratic Party (NDP), the ruling party over which he presides. Although it managed to secure a majority of assembly deputies in the just- completed parliamentary polls, speculation over the party's fate has been rampant. Can a party beset by in-fighting and an ongoing power struggle between its older, autocratic leaders and younger, reformist cadres actually implement the ambitious reform programme outlined in the president's speech?

This week the party was confronted with another crisis that threatened to place both its unity, and its parliamentary majority, in jeopardy. Several independent MPs who rejoined the NDP after winning their assembly seats were now threatening to quit the party altogether unless they were given posts as heads of some of the 19 parliamentary committees. While NDP sources described the MP's threats as "blackmail", the party's general secretariat summoned party members together to find ways to resolve the deadlock.

Only 145 of the 444 candidates fielded by the NDP in the elections won. This dismal failure forced the party to re-integrate many of its former members who ran as independents when the party turned down their original requests to run under the NDP banner. The massive re-integration of independent candidates may have allowed the NDP to restore its majority, raising its share of seats from 33 to 72 per cent, but it also looks to come with a hefty price tag. Several MPs have conditioned their return to the party on a number of demands. "They are trying to extract political gains from the party's need to maintain its majority," a party source told Al-Ahram Weekly. In any case, the source said, these MPs would continue to be a "restless bloc" that will negatively influence the NDP's performance in the assembly.

Several MPs who spoke to the Weekly boasted that they had earned their seats via massive popular support, even though the party itself had failed them. Mustafa El-Said, former economy minister who ran as an independent and re- joined the party later, discounted the idea that the independent bloc was using blackmail to make gains. "We have earned our place in the assembly without party support, and we have proven to be more popular than those candidates that the party chose to nominate," El-Said said. As such, it was only fitting that the party assign them top assembly posts. This kind of argument is likely to haunt inter-party discussions, and perhaps even tilt the balance within the party itself in the independents' bloc's favour.

Another key challenge facing the NDP involves making sure that these so- called "defectors" -- as they are commonly referred to within the party -- remain seriously committed to the NDP's agenda. Shaken by this particular threat, leading NDP member Kamal El-Shazli, who is also the minister of parliamentary affairs, told a group of the "defectors" not to embarrass the party by questioning government ministers without obtaining prior consent from party leaders. At the same meeting, party members were instructed to put their differences aside. According to weekly Akhbar Al-Youm, the MPs were also instructed not to oppose any of the party's policies during assembly sessions, and toe the party's line on different policy issues. They were also told that the party would not be tolerating any deviation from views that have already been agreed upon in party meetings. "If the NDP does not put its house in order, and speak with one voice in the assembly, things are likely to play in favour of the opposition bloc led by the Muslim Brotherhood," Wahid Abdel-Maguid, a member of the NDP's Policies Secretariat, told the Weekly.

Observers, nonetheless, argue that the battle over the distribution of assembly posts is only a forerunner to the larger battle within the party, pitting its old autocrats against the younger cadres. Some even suggest that the recent corruption scandal involving Hafez Abdel-Rahman, former head of the 6 October Media City and a close associate of former Information Minister Safwat El-Sherif, was part of an attempt by party reformists led by Gamal Mubarak, head of the NDP's Policies Secretariat, to jettison some of the old guard.

Analysts like Nabil Abdel-Fattah of Al-Ahram's Centre for Political and Strategic Studies think the NDP's only possible exit strategy involves taking punitive measures against those who deviated from the party line by contesting the elections against NDP candidates. "Rather than rewarding them with top posts in the assembly, the NDP should have acted firmly against those members who broke the party ranks," Abdel-Fattah said. He said the party needed a structural revolution that would rid it of leading members who faired especially poorly in the elections. The party has already sacked 11 of its leading figures in different governorates, holding them responsible for some of the dismal election results.