Dealing with a new reality
What will the ruling party do to recover the ground it has
lost to the Muslim Brothers, asks
Omayma
Abdel-Latif
 Click to view
caption |
WAIT AND SEE: The perplexed looks on the faces
of these voters in El-Gharbiya Governorate's El-Delgamon village
seem to reflect a general uncertainty about the parliamentary
elections thus far. As the second stage goes into run-offs this
Saturday, questions about the escalating contest between the
ruling National Democratic Party and the Muslim Brotherhood, the
widespread reports of vote rigging, and the police's "neutrality"
in the face of election day violence, have yet to be fully
addressed. In fact, clearer answers will probably have to wait
until after the three-stage process comes to a close on 7
December.
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As the country braces itself for Saturday's run-off polls in the
second stage of the parliamentary elections, the ruling National
Democratic Party (NDP) is struggling to come to terms with its poor
showing in the elections so far. Half-way through the parliamentary poll
the picture emerging is of a party that has lost a great deal of ground,
as well as direction, in the face of a strong Muslim Brotherhood (MB)
challenge.
Then there is the question of turnout, with some 75 per cent of
registered voters staying at home, a figure, say many commentators, that
reflects just how divorced the NDP has become from the electorate it
purports to serve. In the second stage of the elections the NDP lost 47
seats as more than a third of its candidates failed to secure victory.
The fate of 89 NDP candidates now hinges on run-off votes. In contrast
the MB has made startling inroads, winning all six seats in Minya and
breaking the NDP's monopoly in Menoufyia, birthplace of President
Mubarak, where they won three seats. In Alexandria seven of the MB's 10
candidates emerged victorious.
The NDP, analysts believe, desperately need to secure the two-thirds
majority in the People's Assembly, by the end of the second round. If
the NDP's poor showing at the polls has come as no surprise to most
commentators the same cannot be said of the party's conduct during the
election campaign. Thuggery, violence, the offering of bribes and vote
rigging marred the second round of the vote, with NDP candidates and
supporters by far the worst offenders. Such tactics have raised serious
questions over the party's commitment to democratic transition through
the ballot box and rendered its much-hyped "New Thinking" slogan all but
meaningless.
According to one human rights activist, in its desperate attempts to
snatch the talismanic two-thirds majority the party's candidates were
allegedly given a green light to do whatever was deemed necessary,
including the hiring of thugs to terrorise voters. In the second round,
commented another observer, the electorate witnessed the "NDP's
democracy of mass destruction".
Critics of the NDP hold the party responsible for "poisoning" the
political process. "Vote-buying, thuggery, ambiguous slogans and
platforms and a state apparatus hopelessly devoted to serving NDP
candidates have all contributed to the disastrous state of affairs,"
Bahieddin Hassan, head of the Cairo Centre for Human Rights Studies,
told the Weekly. The resort to violence is the latest in a series
of what many observers view as fatal errors to beset the party's
electoral performance. The selection of the least popular figures to run
the campaign, the absence of a clear position on party members who opted
to run as independents to the defeat of some of the NDP's key reformers
such as Hossam Badrawi while the party's autocrats secured landslide
victories all point, they argue, to a party in crisis. It is a concern
that is even voiced within the NDP, with one prominent NDP insider, who
requested anonymity, describing the atmosphere within the party as
"scary and dangerous".
"The party is shooting itself in the foot," the source told
Al-Ahram Weekly. "They are provoking people by holding on to
autocrats despite the credibility deficit they have with the public." At
least part of the vote that went to the Muslim Brotherhood, pointed out
the source, was a protest against the NDP retaining discredited figures.
The party, say analysts, seems oblivious to the fact that more than 75
per cent of voters have effectively boycotted the poll. And the figure,
says one human rights group, would have been higher were it not for the
"electoral slave trade" that is thriving among the poor.
"The voters are clearly sending some messages to the NDP during these
elections," wrote Nader Fergani, lead editor of the Arab Human
Development Report, in Al-Arabi newspaper, the mouthpiece of the
Nasserist Party. "When voter turnout does not exceed 10-15 per cent in
the parliamentary elections the message is clear -- the party is not
connecting with the people."
But is the NDP doing anything to contain its losses and address their
cause? Mohamed Kamal, a leading member of the party's influential
Policies Secretariat, does not share the doom and gloom of many
commentators. Kamal thinks it premature at this stage to assess the
party's electoral performance and calculate losses and gains. "We are in
the middle of elections, our aim is to achieve a comfortable majority
and we are heading in that direction," Kamal told the Weekly on
Tuesday. "We will win the election and form the majority in the
assembly." Commenting on Sunday's violence Kamal said that while the NDP
did not condone such behaviour it was far from being solely responsible.
Muslim Brotherhood candidates, he said, had committed their own
infringements.
But according to Mohamed Zari', spokesperson for the National
Campaign for Election Monitoring, none of the organisation's observers
has reported "Muslim Brotherhood supporters with guns or swords or
knives, as was the case with NDP and independents' supporters". So what
is the NDP going to do? According to one member of the Policies
Secretariat the party has yet to hold an emergency meeting to discuss
its poor showing. Nor, he told the Weekly, does it appear to have
any strategy to recover the ground it has lost to the MB. "There is no
strategy of any kind to combat electoral losses... the Brothers'
coming," he said.
Although the bulk of the post-second stage election debate focused on
the MB's success, with pro-regime writers busy painting bleak scenarios,
little thought appears to have been given to why the NDP has failed so
dismally to appeal to the voters, let alone what this means for the
process of political reform. "People have simply lost confidence in the
party, while the events of bloody Sunday clearly mark the end of the
NDP's attempts to repackage itself as a democracy- promoting entity,"
said Hassan.
Several human rights organisations have already begun the process of
contesting the results of elections in constituencies where bribes and
violence were common, leading many to predict that Egypt's 2005
parliament will be
short-lived.
