In the run up to the 2005 parliamentary elections, Al-Ahram Weekly will be surveying the nation's political scene. This week Mona El-Nahhas explores the Ghad Party, interviews its parliamentary list and interviews its leader One Ghad too many The short history of a very controversial party The Ghad (Tomorrow) Party was born in October 2004, after its founder -- 40-year-old lawyer and MP Ayman Nour -- finally received an official licence from the semi- governmental Political Parties Committee. At the time, it was nearly impossible to obtain that kind of approval. The Ghad Party's sudden emergence, then, inevitably raised several question marks. Some even accused the party of being in league with the government. Actually, the Political Parties Committee had previously rejected the Ghad three times, beginning in 2003. Following each rejection, Nour used a different name for the party and introduced amendments to its platform that were meant to prove that the party's programme was unique. He finally appealed to the Political Parties Court, an affiliate of the Supreme Administrative Court, which is authorised to hear political party related appeals. The court's final verdict, however, was never pronounced because Nour got the committee's approval just a week before the court date was set. With the official licence in hand, the Ghad held its first general assembly last November, when party founders elected Nour as the party chairman, and chose the 46 members of the higher committee. At the time, some remarked that Nour seemed to have made sure that the majority of the higher committee's members had limited political backgrounds and not much public popularity, thus guaranteeing his role as the party's only driving force. The party's members, meanwhile, seem to have nothing in common. They are a strange mixture of old aristocrats, businessmen, underprivileged residents of Cairo's working-class Bab Al-Sha'riya district, and dissidents from the liberal Wafd Party. Before founding the Ghad, Nour was a leading Wafd Party member. He quit the Wafd after a major dispute with its leader Noaman Gomaa in 2001. A great many Wafdists who were also angry about the way Gomaa was administering the party later quit the Wafd to join Nour's new party. Analysts have called the party's platform unique. While it offers solutions to all of the country's problems, priority is given to domestic issues over foreign affairs. The party calls for the implementation of a parliamentary state curtailing the unlimited authorities of the president. The platform also calls for democratic reform, with an emphasis on secularism, and promotes the empowerment of women and the young. There has also been criticism, however, that Nour, while accepting membership applications, was not selective enough. His sole aim, at the time, was to widen his party's membership in an attempt to show how strong and popular the Ghad was. Nour boasted that the Ghad was Egypt's strongest opposition party, and that it was going to replace the ruling NDP. In January 2005, that bubble began to burst when Nour was arrested on charges of forging 1435 of the party's membership applications. According to Nour, the case was fabricated by the state to ruin his political career. Public opinion seemed to be in his favour, with many agreeing that the state was trying to silence the outspoken activist. Nour's supporters cited things like Nour's calls for political reform, as well as governmental fears of a connection between the party and the US. Last December, former US ambassador to Egypt David Welch visited Nour at his residence. Two days, before his arrest, Nour met former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright at a reception. There was also the fact that Nour had -- early on -- hinted that he intended to run for president. Ironically enough, the case against him helped Nour; it made him something of a hero, and public sympathy for his cause increased. While still in jail, he announced that he would, indeed, be running for president. In March, after 40 days of detention at Tora prison, attorney-general Maher Abdel-Wahed released Nour on LE10,000 bail. His trial at the Cairo Criminal Court started on 28 June. If convicted, Nour could face a prison term of up to 15 years. Legal experts were surprised by the government's decision to go through with the trial; they were sure Nour would be cleared, and the case against him dropped. Their argument was that it was not Nour's legal responsibility to check the membership applications. That was the Political Parties Committee's business. And in forgery cases, they said, the applicants themselves -- not their representatives -- should be questioned. Legal experts also wondered why Nour would go to the trouble of forging such a huge number of applications when the law stipulates that party founders only needed to submit 50. In the meantime, Nour's arrest caused tensions between Egypt and the US. The Bush administration severely criticised Nour's detention and pressured the Egyptian government to release him. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was even rumoured to have cancelled her trip to Egypt last March to protest against Nour's detention. The US stance ended up fuelling speculations of inappropriate ties between Nour and the US, rumours the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) has used against Nour in an attempt to tarnish his image. A smear campaign has labelled him the "US agent". According to analysts, the US used Nour as a card to pressure the government into making concessions on a number of crucial political issues. Nour, meanwhile, was being hassled about everything from the origins of his personal fortune to the authenticity of his Russian PhD. During the trial, the court did not allow Nour's lawyers access to the case documents. At the courtroom itself, Nour found himself being insulted by the lawyers of the other defendants standing trial with him. Losing his patience, Nour asked that the court panel assigned to try him be replaced, arguing that its neutrality was in question. His request was quashed and he was fined LE9,000. The case went back to the same court. Last month Nour was also embroiled in a damaging bribery case allegedly involving a lawyer working in his office. To make matters more complicated, just a few days after Nour placed second in September's presidential election, the Ghad Party faced a major internal split. Although Nour's 7.6 per cent of the total votes may appear minuscule compared to President Mubarak's 88.6 per cent, the showing still represents a significant victory over the Wafd Party and its chairman Noaman Gomaa, who only got 2.7 per cent of the vote. Many analysts said it was that strong showing that further catalysed the attacks against Nour. Along with three other members of the party's higher committee, the party's former deputy chairman Moussa Mustafa Moussa, suddenly decided to challenge Nour's leadership of the party. They held an emergency general assembly during which they voted for Nour's dismissal, electing Moussa as their new leader instead. They accused Nour of being a dictator who should not be leading a liberal party like the Ghad. They also accused Nour of paving the way for his wife -- TV announcer Gamila Ismail -- to become the party's secretary-general, a post that Ragab Helal Hemeida, one of the dissidents, had been aiming to occupy. The dissidents submitted a formal notice regarding their meeting's conclusions to the political parties committee, asking for recognition. The committee declined to take sides, leaving it to the party's leaders to settle the issue themselves. In response, Nour convened the party's general assembly, during which members unanimously renewed their confidence in him. Calling "Moussa and his group nothing but state agents, who got orders to destroy the party ahead of parliamentary polls". Nour said they had no legitimacy to represent the party, considering they had all been dismissed by the party's council of sages just a few days before their dissension attempt. It was not the first time the party had seen that kind of internal friction. While Nour was in prison earlier this year, Moussa and Hemeida also attempted to remove their chairman. Security bodies, it was said, may have intimidated Moussa, a businessman with no political background. He chose to take the government's side so as not to be dragged into the forgery case. As for Hemeida, he has been accused of previously being used by the government to destroy opposition parties. Hemeida joined the Ghad, after fighting for the Liberals Party's top seat for nearly nine years, another internal conflict that has basically made that party completely ineffective. At the time, Moussa and Hemeida said they wanted to make the party less radical, and were keen to avoid direct confrontation with the state. They were about to freeze publication of the party's mouthpiece. Only when senior party members led by Mona Makram Ebeid, the party's former secretary-general, intervened, did matters calm down. Ebeid later resigned in protest; her resignation was another blow for the party. In the latest escalation of the party's internal conflicts, Moussa has just launched a newspaper that looks just like the original party's mouthpiece, and is also called Al-Ghad. Abdel-Nabi Abdel-Sattar, who previously worked for Nour's Al-Ghad, became the chief editor of the new publication, which hit newsstands two weeks ago. The two newspapers have nothing in common but the Ghad Party's logo and orange branding scheme. While Nour's paper is stridently critical of the government, Moussa's flatters the regime and implicitly advocates the inheritance of power.
