Look in the mirror

By Salama A Salama

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The drowning of 184 young Egyptian men off Italian coasts didn't make waves in this country, so to speak. We've grown so accustomed to such tragedies that we now read about them and quickly choose to forget them. It happened off Libya. It happened off Greece. And it keeps happening. Over and over, our young men brave death to get away. You know those dolphins and whales that beach themselves for unknown reasons? This is what they remind me of, except that there is a reason. There is a well of poverty and despair so deep that impels them to act so insanely.

No one is taking the trouble to examine the social and economic conditions that made those young men sell whatever meagre possessions they have, going into debt even, just to be dumped near European shores. The tragedy should have shocked us into action, but it didn't. It should have featured in the recent congress of the National Democratic Party (NDP), but it didn't.

The NDP tells us that it is the only party capable of leading the country. Without its old guard and the new guard, the country would sink like a scuttled ship, the NDP believes. The ruling party has changed 28 provisions of its bylaws and attracted new and young members, it says. Its economic policies are internationally praised and dividends will trickle down to the needy, it claims. It has introduced dozens of laws that opened the door to constitutional and political reform, we are told.

The NDP re-elected its secretariats and committees, from the bottom to the top. But the new blood failed to go all the way into the NDP's old veins. The NDP's top decision-making body, the Political Bureau, remains unchanged. The NDP is now electing its leaders through secret balloting. Yes, secret balloting. How impressive is that?

The only real change the NDP introduced was the formation of a higher agency that would nominate the next presidential candidate. The move was obviously designed to give the NDP a presidential candidate who would be legitimate and uncontroversial. And yet it was this particular move that made many people angry in this country. Why is that?

The NDP talks a lot about social justice, but unemployment and poverty are still rising. Education is a nightmare. And our health services are in such disarray that one of our most celebrated doctors died a few days ago for lack of proper care. The gap between wages and prices is so wide that no system of subsidies can breach it. Corruption is as rampant as ever and democracy is in dire straits.

President Hosni Mubarak has asked his aides to evaluate the successes and failures of the NDP. I would argue that the biggest failure of the NDP is that it sees itself as the only party fit to rule. Any progress has to come through NDP efforts, ideas, and figures. All opposition parties have to rally behind the NDP. The ruling party even adopted a slogan that suggests as much.

The NDP doesn't believe in competition or in the co- existence of strong and capable parties. It likes to talk about modernisation and renewal, but deep down, the NDP is a conventional and personality-bound party. It asks people to engage in political life and then excludes large segments of society from public policy or office. The violations observed during student union elections are a case in point.

The NDP needs to get over its personality cult, its arrogance, and its greed for power. Perhaps it should dedicate one of its future congresses to self-criticism.