Stalled at a crossroads
Fatemah Farag considers some of the issues being discussed in the lead up to the Tagammu's Fifth Party Congress
According to the Tagammu Party's 2003 draft political report, "the lessons of the past years confirm that the party and political parties in general desisted from making optimal use of the limited margin of democracy available." The report goes on to insist that, "we need, in the coming period, to make the utmost use of the popular movement and work towards increasing this democratic margin irrespective of the challenges and the sacrifices."
As the Tagammu Party prepares for its fifth Party Congress, to be held on 17 December, party politics are revving into full gear. The fuel has been the release of the 79-page draft political report prepared by the party's political office -- a routine report released one month before the convening of the congress, which is held every five years.
This round, however, the report indicates that the Tagammu must recognise itself to be at a crossroads. On the one hand regional developments in Iraq and in Palestine threaten crises; on the other hand, the report describes the local scene as follows: "the government has continued its anti-democratic policies and its alliance with the rich and against the poor. [The regime] has entered into economic, political, social and cultural crises of dangerous proportions and the [current] situation cannot continue. Change has become a necessity that cannot be ignored."
The question is whether or not the party is up to the task. According to leading Tagammu member Abdel-Ghaffar Shukr, "the Fifth Congress is an opportunity for the party to review its policies. This round the three main challenges involve our position vis-à-vis the state, the right of all political trends to organise legally, and building the Tagammu into a popular and active political entity."
These long standing issues actually came to a head last year. "Last year we recognised that the party leadership was not adhering to the decisions taken by the 1998 congress, [which required us] to focus on connecting with a wider audience and move beyond party premises onto the Egyptian street," explained Hussein Abdel-Razeq, a senior Tagammu member and head of the party's political office. Accordingly, an extraordinary meeting was held in 2002, and since then, boasts Abdel- Razeq, party members have been more active in public protests. "We are the only political party that has in the last year organised rallies not just in solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada and against the occupation of Iraq, but also on local issues such as the Unified Labour Law, passed by Parliament this year, and the rise in the prices of basic commodities," he said.
How effective these initiatives have been will be debated in a series of discussions that begin today at the party's headquarters, and will be followed up by debate throughout party branches nationwide. Despite these initiatives and the strong anti-government language used in the political report, it is clear that some are still concerned about the Tagammu's recent drift into the government fold. Shukr told Al-Ahram Weekly that the party's relationship with the state "is a serious problem. Over the past years the Tagammu has been turned into a government tail." In a 2002 report, Shukr expressed his concern regarding a tendency amongst some of the party's ranks to want rapprochement with the government at the expense of building the party into an independent entity.
First established in 1975 as a leftist forum within the Arab Socialist Union, the nation's sole political party at the time, the Tagammu came into its own in April 1976 when President Anwar El-Sadat allowed the ASU's three forums -- left, centre and right -- to grow into full-fledged political parties. Tagammu started out as a coalition of Marxists, Nasserists and Arab nationalists, held together by a common spirit of leftist sympathies. Although the initial years were encouraging, the party's weak performance in the 1984 and 1987 parliamentary elections resulted in a new and protracted phase of confusion and weakness. Its socialist slogans were dropped in 1995, and by the 1998 internal general elections, a party that once boasted 150,000 members registered a turnout of only 1,000.
At that point, the Tagammu began to reach out beyond its borders. Beginning in 1997, the relationship of the party to Islamist political forces became an issue of heated debate especially as the party mouthpiece Al- Ahali and its current Secretary General Rifaat El-Said waged a pro- government anti-terrorism campaign for many years. The 1998 Fourth Party Congress was unable to reach a consensus on whether the party should endorse the right of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood to become a legal political party. At the same time the Tagammu went on to coordinate closely with the Brotherhood and its more politically flexible splinter group, Al-Wasat, within the framework of the Committee for Coordination between Political Parties, also established in 1998.
According to Abdel-Razeq and other senior members of the Tagammu, the time has come to make a final decision: either for or against the democratic principle that all political forces have the right to legal existence. "How important an issue this is will be made clear in the discussions that will take place at the local level. So far this has been an issue discussed within a group of some 15 people, all of whom have had clear views on the issue for some time now," Shukr explained.
Abdel-Razeq said the debate on the party's relationship with Islamist groups has been blown out of proportion. "We may go for or against the idea of supporting Islamists' right to have their own political parties. The important thing is that the party programme that comes out of the upcoming congress be consistent, and not include the same contradictions on this issue that are inherent in the programme adopted in 1998," he said.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 18 - 24 September 2003 (Issue No. 656)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/656/eg7.htm