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

Small fry by the half dozen

A number of small parties have been born during the past few years. Carrying no political weight, some of them exist on paper only, with no support outside their leadership; many came into being as a result of court action by their leaders.

One political analyst described some of these party heads as "psychological cases", seeming more concerned with dream-interpretation and palm-reading than politics. Others have such grandiose dreams as merging Egypt and Sudan or uniting Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims.

The appearance of these parties, according to political analysts, is a natural by-product of a political system which confines the authority of licensing new parties to a semi-governmental committee and the administrative courts: "The formation of new parties became a judicial, not a political, decision," said Diaa Rashwan, an expert at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.

Al-Umma [Nation] party

Ahmed El-Sabahi

Al-Umma was established in June 1983 after its founder, Hajj Ahmed El-Sabahi, filed and won a lawsuit in an administrative court. Interviewed at the party's headquarters, a poorly-furnished two-room apartment on Qasr Al-Aini Street, the 80-year-old Sabahi declined to disclose his party's platform in the coming elections on the grounds that "other party leaders might steal our ideas".

Bespectacled and wearing a tarboush (fez), Sabahi claimed he had risen to international fame following the publication of his series of books, the most well-known being a volume on the interpretation of dreams. "My mail box is always packed with letters from people all over the world writing to me about their dreams and asking for my interpretation," Sabahi said.

He also boasted of his prowess as a palm reader, and of being the inventor of a new sport, rocketball, which he described as "better than basketball and handball". Unfortunately, he said, he had to abandon the game in order to devote his time to "the success and expansion of the Umma Party".

Sabahi's objective is the "revival of the Egyptian identity". This, he believes, could be achieved if all Egyptians would agree to wear a head cover. Claiming that President Gamal Abdel-Nasser banned the tarboush in the 1950s - which is historically untrue - Sabahi asserted: "Egyptian men these days look like monkeys. We need a national head cover." According to Sabahi, he has broached the subject with President Hosni Mubarak, "who had no objection to my idea".

Sabahi had initially hesitated about contesting this month's elections, on the grounds of lack of funds, but later announced that he was fielding as many as 70 candidates.

Al-Takaful Party

Dr. Osama Shaltout

Al-Takaful (Mutual Support) came into existence last February, again as the result of a lawsuit. Its leader, Dr. Osama Shaltout, is a professor of economics at Cairo University, with doctorate degrees in Islamic studies and military strategy. As the party's name denotes, its objective is mutual support - social, political and economic - not only among Egyptians but also among Arabs, Muslims and eventually the whole of humanity.

The party's platform demands that the current tax system be abolished. Instead, one per cent should be deducted from the fortune of every "rich man" to finance an ambitious programme that would guarantee every Egyptian a monthly government salary - over and above his job earnings - and free medical care.

Shaltout has other dreams as well. He wants Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims to unite in one sect. And his plans do not end there: "This should be followed by humanity uniting and embracing a single religion," he said.

Shaltout said the party has nominated 35 candidates in the elections. He is running in Al-Haram district, under the slogan "Determination and knowledge against money and profit".

Green Party

Kamal Kira

Hoping to emulate Western environmental groups, the Green Party came into existence in 1990, also as the result of a court order. Hassan Ragab, a former ambassador with an interest in Egyptology, was elected chairman, the late Abdel-Salam Dawoud deputy chairman and Kamal Kira, secretary-general.

It was clear from the very beginning that the party's objectives were non-political. As Ragab put it at the time, its main concern is protecting the environment from the people and protecting the people from the environment.

The party has launched modest pollution-fighting campaigns, with little apparent success. It asked farmers not to throw the carcasses of dead animals into the Nile and urged the government to protect the southern suburb of Helwan from the dust spewed out by its cement factories. The party also submitted a petition to parliament requesting that the destruction of a plant nursery in Mohandessin, by an unnamed Arab country which planned to build an embassy on its grounds, he halted.

The party made a big faux pas in February 1992 when, as part of an anti-smoking campaign, it invited a Swiss national to Cairo. The man claimed that for payment of 100 Swiss francs he could help smokers to give up their habit. Some people paid and were not cured of their addiction. Others, who also paid, did not even meet the "specialist", who absconded with their money. The Green Party was accused of fraud and had to re-imburse the latter group.

Since September 1993, the party has been under the leadership of Kamal Kira. Unlike Ragab, who maintains that the party is interested in environmental issues only, in Kira's opinion, "all parties are political and so are we. Our party is also interested in social issues but focuses more on the environment."

The party's office is a poorly furnished apartment in Dokki, staffed only by Kira and an office helper. Shaping up the party, Kira says, "needs effort and money".

Misr Arab Socialist Party

Gamal Rabie

First established in 1976, following the switch to the multi-party system, the Misr Arab Socialist Party, under the leadership of then Prime Minister Mamdouh Salem and the informal patronage of President Anwar El-Sadat, won that year's parliamentary elections to become the ruling party.

But in July 1978, President Sadat announced that he was establishing a new party under the name of the National Democratic Party. As a result, the sweeping majority of Misr Party members flocked to the new party's fold; Sadat later ordered their merger - in effect to take over by the NDP.

But three out of the 30 members of the Misr party's political bureau rejected the merger. They were Mamdouh Salem, Abdel-Azim Abul-Atta and Gamal Rabie. The latter, following Sadat;'s assassination in 1981, filed a lawsuit demanding that the merger of the two parties be revoked. He won a court order in favour of the Misr Party four years later. But the NDP filed a counter-lawsuit and the legal battle continued until 1991, when another court order granted official recognition to the Misr Party.

"However," Rabie said, "the party could not retrieve its funds, offices and cars which had been taken over by the NDP".

Interviewed at his Garden City home, Rabie said that, to achieve an Egyptian revival, seven types of ignorance had to be eradicated - alphabetical, educational, intellectual, ideological, political, medical and historical - the latter being the most important of all. "Young people are the ones to accomplish this mission," he added. "Our task is to set them on the right track."

Rabie described relations between the Misr Party and other parties as "very good - we are one big family". But he complained that his party had no money. "Out of patriotism, I refuse to take money from Libya or any other country," he declared.

Rabie said his party has nominated 26 candidates in the coming elections, while 41 party members were running as independents.

Misr Al-Fatah (Young Egypt) Party

Alieddin Saleh

The old Misr Al-Fatah party was founded in 1936 by Ahmed Hussein and dissolved, along with all other parties, in 1953. Although Ibrahim Shukri's Labour Party was considered by some analysts as an attempt to reviving Misr Al-Fatah, three members - Alieddin Saleh, Mahmoud El-Meligi and Ibrahim Zeidan - broke ranks with Labour and sought to establish an independent Misr Al-Fatah.

In 1990, Saleh won a court order legalising the new party, but since then he has had to face competition from as many as 12 men, including Abdallah Rushdi and Sherif El-Fadali, for the leadership post. As a result of a series of lawsuits and counter-lawsuits filed by the rivals, the Political Parties Committee has decided to freeze Misr Al-Fatah's activities until the outcome of the legal battle is clear.

Puffing comfortably on a sheesha in his Imbaba home, Saleh nevertheless claimed that "we have no splits in our party". He alleged that the government had provoked the party's problems "in order to stop our activities".

In fact he reckons that the hearts of other party leaders are eaten up with "jealousy and envy" as they watch the performance of his party and its mouthpiece, also called Misr Al-Fatah. The other parties, in his opinion, are "a big zero".

Saleh claims an affinity of thought with Muammar Gaddafi, whom he describes as a close friend. "We are both against the United States, Israel and the Arab monarchies. We stand for a united Arab world," he said. According to Saleh, Gaddafi donated $100,000 to the party in 1990 as a token of this friendship.

As a result of the Political Parties Committee's "freeze" decision, Misr Al-Fatah is not contesting the forthcoming elections.

Unionist Democratic Party

Ibrahim Tork

Mohamed Abdel-Moneim Tork won a court order legalising the Unionist Democratic Party in April 1990. Now led by Tork's son, Ibrahim Tork, a bank accountant and a businessman, the party has the unity of Egypt and Sudan as its declared objective. It also favours private enterprise.

The party filed a lawsuit with an administrative court last July demanding that the separation of Egypt and Sudan be declared null and void on the grounds that Egyptians had not been polled on the decision, which was taken by the Revolution Command Council in 1953. The decision was taken after a national referendum in Sudan showed that the majority of Sudanese favoured an independent state.

Moataz Salaheddin, the party's secretary-general, said the party wants the constitutional provision describing Egypt as a socialist country to be changed. "We are calling for a free economy," he explained. Although the party has nominated 16 candidates in this month's elections, Tork said on television that he is against the rotation of authority.

Assessment

In the view of Hassan Nafaa, a professor of political science in Cairo University, none of these small parties has political weight or influence, and many Egyptians have not even heard of them. Their proliferation, he added, did a disservice to Egyptian politics, and none of them had a future.

He cited the Green Party as the only possible exception, because it was fighting as a real cause. But he remains to be convinced that the Greens will put up an effective fight for this cause.

Diaa Rashwan an expert at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies agreed that, as far as many Egyptians are concerned, these parties do not exist. "The whole matter is ludicrous," he said. "I believe that a psychologist, and not a political science professor, would be a more appropriate choice for discussing these parties and their leaders."

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