Party polls

As the ruling NDP begins mid-term elections opposition groups accuse it of window dressing, writes Gamal Essam El-Din

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Voting in the internal elections of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) begins next week, as the nomination process ended today. Up to one million NDP members are expected to participate in the polls that will continue until 15 August.

The elections, to be staged every two years, will see more than 210,000 NDP members vying for positions in 6,662 grass root units in cities, towns and districts. In each unit party members elect, via secret ballot, 20 member committees, with one seat reserved for a woman and another for a young male candidate. In addition the unit committees include five appointees.

NDP Secretary for Organisational Affairs Ahmed El-Ezz stresses the elections are the first to be held since the party's general congress in 2007.

"Then," he says, "the NDP's internal regulations were amended to state that two kinds of elections should be held: comprehensive internal elections every four years and mid-term elections every two years."

"While the four-year election aims to rejuvenate the party's ranks from top to bottom, the mid-term elections seek to democratise the NDP's internal structures and strengthen contacts between its rank-and-file members," explained Ezz.

The current mid-term elections are "an exercise in democracy and will be held under close monitoring and supervision. We will make sure that transparency and competition are hallmarks of the polls and that the elected candidates are the best ones," said Ezz.

Gamal El-Saeed, secretary of the NDP's Cairo organisational affairs office insists "the fact that the mid-term elections are an exercise in democracy does not mean that they are not serious or significant". He explained that the poll seeks to build new bridges between senior leaders of the party and grass root units.

The success of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood in clinching 20 per cent of seats in the parliamentary elections of 2005 compelled the NDP's leaders to revise their election strategies, said El-Saeed.

"NDP leaders concluded that the lack of coordination, dialogue and confidence between the party's ranks helped the Brotherhood to its electoral success."

The elections have attracted criticism from opposition groups. Hussein Ibrahim, a Muslim Brotherhood MP from Alexandria, claims the whole process is little more than a hoax. "We believe that a small clique of powerful politicians monopolise decision-making in this autocratic party and that internal elections are just a smokescreen," he said.

Amr Hashem Rabie, a political analyst with Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, believes the NDP's internal elections are "much ado about nothing".

"A very limited circle of NDP heavyweights not only control the party's internal structures irrespective of lections, they control the whole of Egypt's political life." The elections, insists Rabie, are no more than window dressing.