Public perceptions of the government's performance have improved, according to the results of an NDP poll, Mohamed El-Sayed reports The National Democratic Party (NDP) announced the results of its annual poll of 2,400 families nationwide on Tuesday. The results, discussed by members of the party's Higher Council of Policies, will help determine the NDP's manifesto before the country goes to the polls in November. The issues that emerged as of most concern to the public differed little from last years' poll: unemployment, inflation, the state of public services and foreign relations all featured high on the list. Unemployment, which topped the concerns of 11 per cent of those polled last year, is now the main worry of 9.2 per cent. Party leaders and government officials were quick to jump on the fall, claiming it was a result of government policies adopted in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. "Unemployment will always top people's concerns, even if it falls as low as three per cent," said Gamal Mubarak, head of the NDP's Policies Committee. The poll found that 85 per cent of families had a more positive view of social services and of the infrastructure projects being pursued by the government. Water treatment plants, the construction of schools and greater availability of subsidised bread were all cited as having improved. Inflation and public transport scored less well, as did government campaigns to curb population growth. Twenty per cent of the families said their living conditions had improved since last year, while 42 per cent said they had remained the same. "People's perception of their living conditions in 2009 to 2010 are more positive than in 2008," said Alia El-Mahdi, a member of the Policies Committee and dean of the Faculty of Economics and Political Science at Cairo University. Yet contradicting the above findings, the percentage of families who felt that overall economic conditions had worsened climbed to 50 per cent, up from 37 per cent on the previous poll. Upper Egyptians, old people and the less educated, were the categories most affected by price rises in basic commodities. Opinions about the private sector's role in the Egyptian economy were generally favourable. Sixty-three per cent of the families polled believe the private sector has created job opportunities, up from 54 and 44 per cent in previous years. An increasing percentage of people said they would vote in the People's Assembly elections, though whether the 55 per cent who responded positively to the question results in a higher turn out is a moot point. "The figure denotes an increased awareness of the importance of political participation," claimed Mohamed Kamal, head of the NDP's Indoctrination Committee. Yet 30 per cent of those polled said there was no substantive democratic process in Egypt. Allocating a quota for women in the coming People's Assembly elections won the support of 63 per cent of those polled, while 21 per cent disapproved of the measure. More than 71 per cent of the sample thought that Egypt's relations with Arab and Nile Basin countries should be improved. The much publicised tensions between Egypt and other Nile Basin countries over the sharing of Nile water convinced 90 per cent that water security topped national security concerns. Up to 65 per cent believed Egypt's relations with EU countries, the US, China and India needed to be strengthened. "Egypt escaped the worst effects of the global financial crisis thanks to economic decisions taken by the government over the last three years," says El-Mahdi. Had the government not spend LE33 billion on increased wages and expanded the number of people who can access subsidised commodities the results of the poll, he argues, would have been worse. Mubarak's reading of the results of the poll was positive. "In general, there is improvement in the living conditions of the Egyptians, and we're heading towards a better position in all fields in 2010, which contradicts the lies some people disseminate," he said. The results of the NDP's poll are in stark contrast to the findings of international polling centres. An international poll conducted last year by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre found that of all the countries polled Egypt had the highest rate of discontent with its government, with only 13 per cent of respondents saying they were happy with its performance. The poll also found that around 73 per cent of those questioned thought that economic conditions in Egypt were "bad". The discrepancies between the results of the NDP poll and those of international agencies have led observers to take the results of the former with a pinch of salt. "It's a meaningless poll. We have no idea at all what criteria were used to select the sample families," points out Amr Hashem Rabie, a political parties expert with Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. "If the NDP really wanted a poll to be conducted that reflects the opinions of the people about its performance it should have commissioned a neutral agency. Then at least the results would have been credible," Rabie told Al-Ahram Weekly. The party, Kamal insists, conducted the poll itself "because Egypt doesn't have experienced agencies capable of doing so". He also told the Weekly that the experts who conducted the poll "are totally independent and not members of the party". "When conducting the poll, people were not told that it was commissioned by the NDP." Rabie begs to differ. "We have a polling unit at Al-Ahram Centre that can conduct such polls neutrally. And there are many other polling units at the General Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics that could do the job. It seems ridiculous that the NDP should conduct a poll itself that trumpets its successes."
