Presidential powers

By Salama A Salama

---

During the entire debate on constitutional amendments, no one raised the all-too-important question of the president's relation with his own party and other parties in the country. For example, should the president remain a leader of the ruling party even after assuming office, or should he give up his party affiliation and rise above the partisan foray? Alternatively, perhaps the president should give up the leadership of his party but remain an ordinary member in that party so as to be able to rely on its support in the next elections. These are relevant questions for a number of reasons.

First of all, the president must rise above rivalries, whether within his own party or among various parties. The president should be able to resolve political differences and arbitrate in urgent problems, a matter he cannot do unless he remains impartial. Secondly, when one thinks of a multi-party democracy, one thinks of a situation where the ruling party can lose the parliamentary majority at anytime, and the president must be able to function even if his party loses the elections. Thirdly, our experience over the past 50 years or so has not been a particularly cheerful one. Our presidents -- Abdel-Nasser, El-Sadat and Mubarak -- were leaders of the ruling party. And their immense authority stunted political life and stifled any chance for genuine pluralism.

The concentration of power leads to hierarchical stagnation and ultimately to decay and corruption. You cannot have one man controlling the army, the main party, the presidency, the judiciary, police and the cabinet and expect to have normal political life. As all know, the president often has to interfere in insignificant matters, including the treatment of an ordinary citizen at the expense of the state. Under such a situation the state apparatus is bound to take sides with the ruling party, even in elections, for we all know that appointments to top posts are made by the president. This situation creates a mindset in which any opposition to the ruling party is equated with treason.

It is untenable for the president to control the ruling party as well as the executive. And I am not just talking about the current situation, but about what could happen in the future. Imagine a situation where the National Democratic Party (NDP) loses the majority in elections. Such a situation almost happened in the 2005 elections. The NDP was saved at the last moment by independents that decided to join its ranks. And let me tell you this: it won't be long before rival candidates for the presidency will be getting more than seven per cent of the vote. The NDP is unlikely to keep winning the elections for long.

Some people try to justify our situation by saying that in France the president heads the ruling party. But let's not forget that Sarkozy ran for president against Chirac's wishes. Chirac actually wanted Prime Minister De Villepin to succeed him.

The reason we find it so hard to introduce such basic constitutional amendments is that we haven't even come close to having a democratic system. This is why we have to be extra careful in everything we do now, or we'll end up living in a despotic regime masquerading as a democracy.

Had the separation between the presidency and the party leadership been established in the past, the uproar over the bequest of power wouldn't have hit us with such force. And no one would have contested Gamal Mubarak's meteoric rise in the ranks of the NDP.