Destructive chaos

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The events that took place at the Wafd Party's headquarters on Saturday can only hinder reform and democratic development. They came as a shock to the political system and represent far more than a struggle over the position of party president or a conflict between the old and new guard of a specific political party. They represent nothing less than a collapse in the values of freedom and democracy in this country.

The attempt by some to picture the conflict as symptomatic of the internal problems of a single party is far from convincing. Rather, the scenes are a microcosm of the ailments afflicting society as a whole, a product of the destructive chaos from which Egypt is suffering.

What happened cannot be divorced from the larger framework -- or from the situation in which all of Egypt's political parties have found themselves.

Several questions need to be posed. Who benefits from the implosion of opposition parties, and their growing propensity to self-destruct? How far is the Political Parties Committee responsible for what is happening, for the unresolved conflicts and struggles in which the opposition parties are mired?

This current crisis is the result of the steady accretion of unresolved problems, dilemmas that for decades now have remained unaddressed and resulted in the current frailty and brittleness of political life. The activities of political parties have been stifled by the restrictions under which they must operate; restrictions that have been placed on parties for so long.

The Wafd Party is not alone in facing this extended crisis. All political parties are hostage to the deterioration of the nation's political life. The profile of the current regime was drawn more than half a century ago and the last major facelift took place in the late 1970s, i.e. almost three decades ago, when a severely restricted partisan plurality was introduced and the Wafd Party, like the other main opposition parties, began to organise.

These parties, stymied by the absence of any far reaching political reforms, and hampered by quarter of a century of emergency rule, eventually came to play a role in cementing the deadlock. Their leaders' interests seldom extended beyond internal party affairs. In an atmosphere of political stagnation their activities were circumscribed until they operated within a very narrow sphere. The parties atrophied, becoming skeletal organisations that were isolated by the state and effectively prevented from engaging in the kinds of programmes that would allow them to build grassroots support. They lost any pretense to being institutions that might play a role in the formation of a modern state.

Their popular appeal was superseded by that of the Muslim Brotherhood, a fact made all too clear by the recent parliamentary elections in which the Muslim Brotherhood secured 88 seats and the opposition parties just 11. The results were hardly unexpected, but the poor showing of the legal opposition parties exacerbated the tensions within their ranks and hastened the current meltdown which we have witnessed within the Wafd, and which also threatens the leftist Tagammu and Nasserist parties, both of which are in danger of imploding.

The crisis, then, afflicts no single party but engulfs the entire opposition. Nor is the National Democratic Party immune, as its own parliamentary elections performance showed. The storm clouds that have long been gathering in the nation's political skies are about to burst. The Wafd Party is merely the first victim of the political crisis. We can only hope that in the ensuing deluge Egypt is not diverted away from its political goals.