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(WAFA)
[CAIRO] Throughout his week-long trip to the United States, Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif worked hard to showcase Egypt’s political reforms. On talk show after talk show he discussed the new amendment to the constitution that will allow multi-candidate presidential elections for the first time in Egypt’s history.
The Americans, at least, appear to be impressed and after his meeting with United States President George W. Bush, Nazif reported that Bush had “commended President Mubarak’s move for the change in the constitution.”
Back home in Egypt, however, the people—particularly increasingly vocal opposition movements—aren’t quite as impressed. At the same time that Nazif and his team were trumpeting the reforms, a coalition of opposition parties called for a boycott of the May 25 popular referendum to approve the amendment.
“We are boycotting this referendum because we believe that the amendment is not legal, it is illegal,” declared George Ishaq, one of the leaders of Kifaya (Arabic for enough), a new movement featuring leftists, Islamists and liberals all calling for an end to Mubarak’s 24-year-rule. Ishaq condemned the strict conditions in the amendment that to all intents and purposes prevented independent candidacies.
After years of political stagnation, rising pressure from both inside and outside the country have prompted the regime to begin opening up the political system. On May 10, the parliament approved the amendment to Article 76. The amendment, however, was criticized by opposition politicians and activists for being designed to maintain the status quo.
On May 17, the three main opposition parties, the liberal Wafd Party, the leftist Tagammu’ Party and the Nasserist Party all announced that they would boycott the referendum and that they were pulling out of the state-sponsored “dialogue” between the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) and the opposition parties. The Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s largest opposition force, announced soon after that it too would boycott the referendum. They joined the liberal Ghad (tomorrow) Party and the Kifaya movement who’d announced their boycott decision some days earlier.
After initially denying the opposition parties had pulled out of the regime-sponsored dialogue—which had been going nowhere for months—NDP Secretary General ‘Safwat A-Sharif condemned the “negative attitude” of these parties and declared that May 25 would be a “day of honor” for the country.
Already the NDP party machinery is in motion with banners supporting the referendum and praising the president for his pioneering role in introducing political reform. If past referendums are anything to go by, this one should see a lot of fanfare with public sector workers bussed in by the thousands to voting stations.
“The party is working for it,” said ‘Ali Shams A-Din, the former deputy secretary of youth for the NDP. “They have meetings every day with all elements of the party in all the governorates,” he said describing the general mobilization to make sure that Egyptians show up in force to back the amendment.
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(Map provided by worldatlas.com.)
In fact, over the past few weeks, as opposition demonstrations from groups like Kifaya, the Muslim Brotherhood and other sectors of society have gained steam, there has been a concerted effort by regime supporters to mount counter demonstrations. Alongside protests calling for a reform, there are often now crowds waving Mubarak posters and condemning the opposition as foreign agents.
On May Day, the state-controlled labor unions made a great show of pledging their support for the president and a couple of weeks later, the Teachers’ Union followed suit.
The regime even took its campaign all the way to the foreign press and invited journalists on May 12 for a rare press conference with Gamal Mubarak, the president’s son and an influential policymaker in the ruling party. He criticized journalists for their negative coverage of the amendment and went on to call it a “fundamental change that many people are still unable to comprehend.”
Nazif, the prime minister, met later with a smaller number of journalists and gave a dress rehearsal for his smooth performance on NBC’s Meet the Press a few days afterwards. When pressed about the competitiveness of the upcoming presidential elections, however, the prime minister did admit that it probably wouldn’t really be much of a contest if the president participates.
“It will still be more of a referendum than an election if he runs,” said Nazif.
This, of course, is precisely the problem for the opposition. With a rising demand for change sweeping the country, no one wants to be put off by half measures. The amendment, according to critics, so limits the competition to the ruling-party candidate, that it won’t really be much of a contest at all.
In their joint-statement announcing their boycott, the parties also complained about the wording of the referendum, which only asks if the people think that Article 76 should be amended—not whether they agree with the way it is amended.
“If we say yes, we agree with this amendment, if we say no, we reject amending the article,” said Hussein ‘Abd A-Raziq, secretary general of the Tagammu’ Party. “We are not against an amendment, we are against this kind of amendment.” ‘Abd A-Raziq added that they want an amendment to not just Article 76, but several other articles of the constitution governing involving the president’s powers.
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Egyptian Constitution Article 76 (SIS)
What the opposition is hoping will happen is that a low turnout for the referendum will force a redrafting of the amendment by parliament—which is dominated by the NDP. As it is, the Tagammu’ Party has filed a case in court against the wording of the referendum which may result in a delay of the whole process if the court recognizes the suit.
The parties said they would be sending photographers around to the polling stations on the day of the referendum to show how few people actually show up to vote.
According to Shams A-Din of the NDP, however, light turnout for the referendum, if it happens, would have less to do with the opposition parties, whose influence he dismisses, than a longstanding lack of trust of elections.
“They are not used to participation,” he said of Egyptians. “For many years, there was no confidence in the election process.” He said the challenge of the government is to convince people that this time, it really does mean change and he suggested that over half the population supports the amendment.
One group, whose influence can’t be dismissed, however, is the Muslim Brotherhood, who, after years of quiescence, has been staging pro-democracy and reform demonstrations throughout the country in the last few weeks. Already almost 800 of the group’s members have been arrested, with 75 picked up on May 18 alone.
The organization had long avoided major street demonstrations, at least not without the permission of the government, but as Kifaya and other groups took to the streets to demand more democracy, the group finally started its own rallies.
In general, Brotherhood rallies are five to 10 times larger than those of any other opposition trend. The group is believed to a have a solid quarter to a third of the population’s backing. Under the new amendment, however, it would be close to impossible for the movement to field an independent candidate because it would require the support of many members of parliament—most of whom are with the ruling party.
In comments to the press in Egypt and then later again in the United States, Nazif made it clear that the government had no intention of ever allowing the Brothers to form a political party.
“They are not a party; they will never be a party,” he told journalists. “They are a religious group and we don’t allow parties based on religion.”
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Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak with his U.S. counterpart George W. Bush. (SIS)
The movement’s leadership has suggested that while they can’t field the candidate, they might throw their support behind one with whose views they agree. In a rare show of unity, they have backed the opposition parties’ call for a boycott of the referendum.
The entire issue of the referendum may be moot, however, due to another group causing the government’s reform plan a headache. On May 13, some 5,000 judges gathered at the headquarters of their association in Cairo and announced they would not supervise the coming presidential and parliamentary elections unless their own demands were met.
Judicial supervision of elections, first instituted in 2000, is considered necessary to prevent fraud and ballot stuffing—a common phenomenon in earlier contests. The judges said, however, that if they are going to lend legitimacy to elections, they want total control of the process, including the ability to examine voter lists (often filled with fraudulent names) and supervise the area outside the polling stations. In the 2000 legislative elections, security forces often prevented people likely to vote for the opposition from entering the polling stations.
The judges also want total independence from the executive branch, which currently controls them through a number of ways, including setting their salaries. Nazif was even questioned by journalists during his trip to the States about why the judges were not backing the reform process.
Shams A-Din explains away all this opposition in society over the amendment to the fact that people don’t understand this amendment is part of an ongoing process.
“This is not the end of the change process, but is the first step,” he said. “There will be big debates everywhere about future amendments to be proposed that will push the country towards the desired democracy.”
‘Abd A-Raziq of the opposition, however, voices the concerns of many politicians and activists when he says that the amendment seems to suggest that the NDP and Mubarak just want to perpetuate their control over the country, only with a democratic façade.
“We don’t think the ruling party is ready to make any real change to the political and constitutional situation,” he said. “They are interested in continuing one-man and one-party rule.”