Al-Ahram Weekly Issue No. 242 12 - 18 October 1995
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

Born at the centre

Following the 1973 War and the Egyptian-Israeli agreement that it would be their last, the late President Anwar El-Sadat began to devote greater attention to the domestic front. He kicked off the economic open-door policy and took steps to switch the nation to a multi-party political system. In 1974, he announced that the Arab Socialist Union (ASU), until then Egypt's sole political party, would have three wings or forums, representing the right, left and centre. Two years later, the ASU was disbanded and the three forums were upgraded to fully-fledged political parties: the centrist Arab Socialist Misr Party, under the leadership of then Prime Minister Mamdouh Salem; the leftist Tagammu under Khaled Mohieddin; and the rightist Socialist Liberal Party under Mustafa Kamel Murad. According to political analyst Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, the switch to a multi-party system was part of a larger political switch in the direction of the West, particularly the United States.

Dramatic events in 1977 and 1978 then prompted Sadat to establish his own political party. According to Sid-Ahmed, those events included the food price riots of January 1977, Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in November of the same year, the failure of the Misr Party to successfully confront the parliamentary opposition and the re-birth of Fouad Serageddin's New Wafd Party in May 1978.

In a speech marking the 26th anniversary of the July 1952 Revolution, Sadat announced the formation of a new political party to fill the political vacuum and shut the door in the face of the old political forces - an allusion to the Wafd - that "seek to destroy our new democracy". According to Sid-Ahmed, the decision amounted to an attempt by Sadat to tighten his control on power and purge his political opponents.

In August 1978, Sadat announced that the new party would be called the National Democratic Party - after the old and defunct National Party established by Mustafa Kamel, an anti-British nationalist leader, in 1907. In Sadat's view, it was Kamel's party which had truly reflected the aspirations of Egyptians until the decline of partisan politics in the 1920s "at the hands of the Wafd Party". In September of the same year, Salem resigned the chairmanship of the Misr Party and around 250 People's Assembly members rushed to join the NDP.

Following a nationwide referendum, Sadat dissolved the People's Assembly and new elections were held in June 1979, in which the NDP won a sweeping majority, grabbing 347 seats out of 390. In this Assembly, NDP deputies grappled with a number of vital issues, including "food security" projects, amending the personal status law, improving the financial well-being of government employees, the impact of Port Said's new free zone on local industry and codifying Islamic shari'a.

A number of NDP deputies were removed from the Assembly on various charges: Alexandria's Rashad Osman for profiteering illegally from timber sales, Rosetta's Mahmoud Suleiman for drug trafficking, and Kom Ombo's Salah Abul-Magd for trading in state land. A handful of other NDP members were stripped of their parliamentary immunity.

At the NDP's first congress in October 1980, Sadat was elected chairman, Hosni Mubarak, deputy chairman, Fikri Makram Ebeid secretary-general and Mustafa Khalil, deputy chairman for foreign affairs. One month after the second party congress was held in September 1981, Sadat was assassinated and Mubarak took over both as president of the republic and NDP chairman.

In the 1984 elections, the NDP also won a sweeping majority - 390 seats out of 458 - but faced opposition from a newly-forged alliance between the Wafd Party and the Muslim Brotherhood. That parliament witnessed heated debates on such issues as the 1986 mutiny of the Central Security Forces, recurring shortages of some basic foodstuffs, granting asylum to former Sudanese President Gaafar Numeiri and the terrorist crimes committed by the Islamic Jihad organisation. Meanwhile, two NDP members were indicted by the Court of Ethics on corruption charges.

In 1987, the Supreme Constitutional Court ruled that the slate system used in the Assembly elections was unconstitutional and the Assembly was dissolved. New elections were held and a new Assembly convened in May of the same year, with the NDP again winning a sweeping majority - 348 seats out of 458. The opposition this time came mainly from a "tripartite alliance" between the Labour and Liberal parties and the Muslim Brotherhood. In this Assembly, NDP deputies lobbied for new laws on investment and land reclamation and demanded that public sector companies be financially reformed. Headed by leading NDP figure, Speaker Rifaat El-Mahgoub, the Assembly refused to comply with Court of Cassation rulings declaring the election of 78 deputies null and void, on the basis of electoral malpractice. El-Mahgoub, supported by the NDP majority, insisted that parliament was sovereign in all matters concerning its membership.

In 1990, the Supreme Constitutional Court ruled that a combination of the slate and individual systems, which was used in electing the Assembly, was unconstitutional and the Assembly was dissolved again. Another Assembly was elected in November. This time the majority of opposition parties boycotted the election. The NDP won 417 seats out of a total of 453, five seats went to the Tagammu, which had not joined the boycott, and 31 to independents.

According to Wahid Abdel-Meguid of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, the performance of NDP deputies in this Assembly was poor. "They were not able to exercise strong control over the government's performance," he said. "In fact, they gave the impression of being members of a party which the government desperately needed to pass its new economic reform laws."

But according to the Assembly's "achievements report", NDP members raised a variety of important issues, including the crisis of the so-called Islamic money investment companies, transgressions on state land, the problems of public sector companies, the impact of new agricultural liberalisation policies on farmers and the sprouting of haphazard communities around big cities.

Platform

In announcing the birth of the new party, Sadat said its programme of action would be based on certain principles: promoting social democracy, fostering Egypt's affiliation to the Arab world, venerating religious values and a type of economic liberalisation that encouraged private investment in socio-economic development projects. Sadat also stressed that the state had a role in "supplying food to each mouth and a house for each family and establishing a modern state based on faith and science".

To date, the party's platform remains basically unchanged. According to a report issued by the NDP's secretariat in 1994, the NDP upholds democracy and the multi-party system, the freedom of the press and the judiciary, respect for human rights and a strong parliament that exercises effective control on government actions. On the confrontation of terrorism, the report said. "There is an urgent need to mobilise all sectors of the population, through political parties and legitimate institutions, to confront the forces of darkness."

In socio-economic terms, the NDP's report cited a pressing need to give the private sector a greater role in developing the Egyptian economy. The report suggested this could be done by facilitating investment and export procedures and giving Egyptian investors a greater say in economic legislation and decisions. However, the NDP believes that a strong state role should be maintained in a market-oriented economy: "This role is essential because it safeguards the lower and middle income brackets from falling prey to emerging private monopolies or inflationary pressures," the report said.

In foreign policy, the report came out in favour of strengthening Egyptian-US relations because close bilateral ties have proved highly beneficial to Egypt's political and economic interests. It also declared support for Mubarak's peace policy and his efforts to narrow the gap between the negotiating parties, and urged that Arab disputes should be settled peacefully, and the territorial integrity of Iraq and Lebanon maintained.

Funding

According to NDP officials, the party is subsidised by a yearly amount of LE100,000 from the Shura Council as well as LE250,000 from subscriptions to the NDP's publications, Mayo and Al-Liwa Al-Islami.

In October 1978, the National Development Bank (NDB) was established to finance the NDP's development projects. The National Bank, Banque Misr and the Bank of Alexandria each contributed one quarter of the NDB's LE20 million capital while the fourth quarter came from private subscribers, primarily Osman Ahmed Osman, Sadat's minister of reconstruction at the time.

Membership

According to a party report, the number of NDP members stood at 400 in August 1978 and rose to 900 in October of the same year, jumped to 2,275 million in October 1992 and to 3,601 million in October 1995.

ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription

WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg

Al-Ahram Organisation