Al-Ahram Weekly Issue No. 248 23 - 29 November 1995
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

Elections '95 forecast

By Dina Ezzat

Election day on 29 November will most likely hold some surprises, but analysts and politicians are virtually unanimous that a two-thirds parliamentary majority for the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) is assured. The NDP is predictably confident: "We do hope that, God willing, we will be able to achieve a landslide victory," Kamal El-Shazli, the NDP's assistant secretary-general told Al-Ahram Weekly.

Over 4,000 candidates are competing for the Assembly's 444 contested seats. Of these, 439 are NDP members and about 800 belong to the 12 opposition parties - some large, some marginal - and the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, whose members are running as independents.

But the scramble notwithstanding, even opposition leaders doubt that more than 80 seats in the coming Assembly will escape the NDP's clutches - a prediction shared by the Wafd's Yassin Serageddin, Tagammu's Rifaat El-Said, and the Nasserist Party's Hamed Mahmoud.

Vying for second place in analysts' predictions are the Wafd Party and the Islamist trend represented by the Brotherhood and Ibrahim Shukri's Labour Party, both followed by either the leftist Tagammu, led by Khaled Mohieddin, or Diaeddin Dawoud's Democratic Nasserist Party.

A field study conducted by the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies seems to substantiate these predictions. Over the past six months researchers have visited the various electoral districts and interviewed candidates and voters in the governorates of Cairo, Giza, Daqahliya, Alexandria, Port Said and Assiut.

The NDP, at the very least, "will maintain its two thirds majority in the Assembly", said Gihad Ouda, co-supervisor of the study. It is even likely that the NDP majority will exceed two thirds. "There is no way of telling for sure but, according to our study, I can safely say that the opposition will get no more than 50 or 60 seats," Ouda said. Of these, he predicted, some 20 seats would go to the Wafd Party: "It has enough candidates, adequate political diversity that embraces both Muslims and Copts, and adequate electoral weight because of its strong support from large and old families in the various governorates."

Prominent political analyst, Lutfi El-Kholi is not disheartened by these forecasts however: "The next parliament may not produce a new political balance because society still lacks the political prerequisites for that new balance. But I am hopeful that, unlike previous parliaments, it will have new faces that may succeed in stimulating a new political dialogue to help the nation reach political maturity."

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