Al-Ahram Weekly Issue No. 252 21 - 27 December 1995
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

Unaccountably independent

By Gamal Essam El-Din

The exact size of the majority held by the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) in the new People's Assembly remains unclear because no decision has apparently been taken on applications filed by a large number of winning independents to join or re-join the party's ranks.

The NDP fielded 439 candidates in the election battle. One hundred and twenty eight of these won seats in the 29 November first round and 190 emerged victorious in the 6 December second round, giving the NDP a total of 318 seats or 71 per cent of the Assembly's 444 contested seats. But headlines in the Arabic-language press on 7 December announced that the NDP actually held 417 seats, or 93 per cent, because 99 out of the 114 successful independents had entered the party's fold. Many of them were either NDP members or former members who ran as independents because their names were not on the party's official list of candidates.

The move aroused controversy in political circles, with analysts questioning the ethics of a candidate who changes his political affiliation after winning an election. The Arabic-language press, as well as highly-placed officials, suggested that their acceptance by the NDP was a foregone conclusion, until Information Minister Safwat El-Sherif, who serves as the NDP's assistant secretary-general, told reporters last week that only independents who rejoined the NDP before the second round runoffs would be accepted. He put their number at "around 20". Al-Ahram wrote that the policy was a "reflection of the NDP's wish to maintain the non-party character of independents and encourage a strong opposition in parliament".

Kamal El-Shazli, minister of state for parliamentary affairs and another NDP assistant secretary-general, told Al-Ahram Weekly that "there is a strong move to accept only a limited number of independents" into the party. But he said the final decision rests with the NDP chairman, President Hosni Mubarak.

As a result, some NDP sympathisers said they would now prefer to maintain their independent status not only because they had embraced new beliefs but also because they felt let down by the party, which seemed to want to exclude them. One of them is businessman Abdel-Salam Hegazi who won a seat in the Beheira constituency of Itay Al-Baroud in the western Nile Delta. Although he had represented the NDP in the parliaments of 1976 and 1979, his name was struck off the NDP's candidate list in the recent elections. "I think it would be better to remain as an independent, which means I have greater freedom to express my views in the assembly without coming under pressure," he said.

Mohamed Fathi El-Baradi represents another group of independents who made it clear to voters that they were NDP sympathisers and would rejoin the NDP if they won. El-Baradi applied for readmittance to the NDP before the second round runoffs and his subsequent victory in the Gharbiya constituency of Kafr Al-Zayyat in the Nile Delta.

El-Baradi said that he had been an official NDP candidate in the 1990 elections, and lost. He denied allegations of voter deception this time round: "Although I ran as an independent, I told the voters that I planned to re-join the NDP. They believed me because they are aware of my strong connections with the party."

A third category are the "genuine independents" who have no wish to join the NDP or any other party. They include Ahmed Taha (Al-Sahel, Cairo), Abdel-Moneim El-Oleimi (Tanta, Gharbiya) and El-Rifai Hamada (Port Said).

El-Oleimi told the Weekly that joining the NDP would mean that he had deceived the electorate "who voted for me as an independent". He began his parliamentary career as an independent, he said, and wanted to keep it that way: "Independence means that you are free of all kinds of pressures and that you are not tied up by any pre-conceived policies or programmes."

Veteran independent Ahmed Taha expressed the hope that the majority of independents would maintain their non-party status and not join the NDP. "This large number could form an effective opposition force in the new assembly," he said. "Although some genuine independents who put up strong opposition in the outgoing assembly have lost their seats, I hope that new independents, as genuine as the old ones even if they are NDP sympathisers, will blunt the effects of the NDP's sweeping majority in the house."

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