All said and done, this year's parliamentary elections is no walk in the park for the NDP, writes Gamal Essam El-Din It is an open secret that the National Democratic Party (NDP) is sparing no effort, and reserving no means of leverage, to ensure that when the votes are counted after the 28 November parliamentary elections, it will be announced victorious with a comfortable majority. "It is very clear that like any other political party we are working to secure a majority and to form the government," said Mohamed Kamal, the NDP's secretary for indoctrination and training, directly involved in developing the party's electoral campaign. According to both Kamal and Alieddin Hilal, the NDP's secretary for media affairs, the NDP is not taking the next elections lightly. Indeed, despite statements of confidence, memories of the disappointing 2000 and 2005 elections -- when candidates that ran outside the party had to be reintegrated after the elections, so the NDP could secure a majority in parliament -- remain fresh. On 28 October, Gamal Mubarak, the younger son of President Hosni Mubarak and chairman of the influential NDP Policies Committee, told a party conference in Cairo that, "the upcoming parliamentary election is particularly important for the NDP." He continued: "This election may be the second challenge for the party to face after the reforms it has embarked upon since 2000, but this is the first challenge for the party to face in its new fully reformist form, with a new generation of young leaders." On a positive note, Gamal Mubarak asserted: "I am sure that the NDP will be able to win, because Egyptians are now well aware that the policies of the NDP are the ones that truly aim to improve their lives and serve the interests of their country." According to both Hilal and Kamal, the platform of the NDP is carefully designed to fit the expectations -- especially on the socio-economic level -- of as many of the over 30 million eligible voters as possible. "The party has designed its platform with an eye on different social groups, and on the variety of priorities of Egyptians across the country," Hilal said. According to Kamal, the fact that each candidate will have "a local platform" that is specifically tailored to serve the immediate priorities of voters in his electoral district, albeit in line with the national platform, is an indication of the party's keenness to reach out to as many voters as possible. And while the party is running a safe campaign in some districts -- especially in Upper Egypt where its candidates are hardly faced with any serious opposition -- it has to worry in other districts of opposition from within (those who wished to run but were not selected) and from without, especially in districts where the Muslim Brotherhood is fielding probable winners. "We are working hard to reduce the number of NDP members who would run on their own against selected party candidates, and we are keeping an eye on the opposition," Hilal said. For the opposition, while the NDP may well secure a majority in the upcoming elections, it would be an unrepresentative majority, they insist, gained through relentless electoral tactics rather than solid popularity. Hassan Nafaa, a Cairo University political science professor and a leading figure of the call for political change in Egypt, argues that the NDP "has never enjoyed true popular backing in the street," either for its exaggerated association with unpopular governments or for the failure of its members to reach out to the people. Nafaa sees the NDP as only an upgraded version of the Arab Socialist Union (ASU) -- Egypt's sole political party in 1960s. For Nafaa, a full decade of reform efforts in which Gamal Mubarak has invested much capital has failed to sufficiently brush up the image of the NDP. He insists it remains seen as an arm of the regime. This he attributes to the continued party leadership of President Hosni Mubarak, and to the undeniable grey area where NDP members and government members tend to overlap. "Just take a look at the number of businessmen who joined the party [during the past few years], to be members of parliament [and benefit from parliamentary immunity], and who were implicated in a large number of corruption scandals," said Nafaa. Moreover, and despite the many statements made by top NDP leaders, including Mubarak himself, asserting commitment to the less privileged (by far the largest segment of the 80 million-strong Egyptian population), Nafaa is worried about the socio-economic sensitivity -- or lack thereof -- of the party's policies, particularly those generated within the Policies Committee. He insists that the party still has a long way to go to address the worries expressed over the past few years by the protest movement. NDP figures, including those in government, like Minister of Trade and Industry Rachid Mohamed Rachid, acknowledge the slow pace of the "trickle down effect", but they promise that benefits will "eventually" follow. The trickle down philosophy is a crucial lynchpin of the NDP's 2010 parliamentary election platform. Policies aside, Nafaa predicts that the NDP will gain considerable seats in the next parliament. He attributes this probability largely to the consequences of reduced judicial supervision of the electoral process. "With the absence of judicial supervision in 2010, the NDP will be back, depending on public sector employees and police forces to impose a majority of no less 95 per cent in the coming parliament," Nafaa said. NDP leaders insist that there will be sufficient judicial and civil society supervision to ensure that the elections are "transparent, fair and clean". Typically they refer to the commitment expressed by Mubarak himself, in his executive capacity, to ensure that the elections are free and fair. Meanwhile, critics of the NDP argue that the party is still failing on the reform front. Among such critics is Osama El-Ghazali Harb, a former member of the NDP Policies Committee who defected in 2006 to establish and lead the liberal-oriented Democratic Front Party (DFP). Also editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram's Al-Siyasa Al-Dawliya (International Politics), Harb says that he originally agreed to join the Policies Committee in the hope that "it would be the country's locomotive for reform". This, he found out, was not the case. Harb is not willing to accept the NDP argument that reform is a multi-phased process that needs time to bare fruit. He insists that the NDP is too engrossed in its own problems to be able to introduce -- much less to lead -- a process of wide political reform. For him, this has always been the case and it remains so, despite the ascent of the "new guard" to top party positions. Harb finds that the reforms introduced by the Policies Committee are largely focussed on style over content, and that the chances of the party to secure a majority in the next parliament count largely on the political and financial weight -- and family influence -- of NDP candidates, rather than on any true upgrade in the performance of the party or its outreach skills. Not true, argues Hilal, who insists that the party has been able to develop a process of internal debate among its members and an effective mechanism for the selection of election candidates. Hilal does not deny the affluence and influence of some candidates, but insists that it is an added asset to being a member of the NDP. The proof of the pudding, Harb says, is in the eating. He insists that NDP leaders can only be judged against the party's performance when elections are held. Wahid Abdel-Meguid, a political analyst at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, believes it is almost impossible for the NDP to promote reform while perceived as so closely associated with the government. He insists that if Gamal Mubarak wanted to promote reform, he "must have disconnected the NDP from the government and restructured it to become more independent and self-reliant. But he has never done that, because he is sure that the NDP will be nothing without the government and the president on top." Abdel-Meguid believes that the next parliament will include a majority of NDP MPs, a larger number of legal opposition deputies, and a small number of Muslim Brotherhood representatives. "All signs are that there is a secret deal between the NDP and the main opposition parties, and that this -- rather than Gamal Mubarak's reforms -- will be behind the ruling party's expected landslide victory," concluded Abdel-Meguid. NDP Secretary-General Safwat El-Sherif and leading figures of the main opposition parties, Wafd and Tagammu, have vehemently denied that any deal exists. However, according to NDP sources the party would be glad to see the majority of the opposition in the next parliament from within the ranks of licensed parties, rather than those of the Muslim Brotherhood that is denied legal licence but that enjoys considerable popularity in society. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood are running as independents and constitute, as NDP sources acknowledge, the toughest competition NDP candidates face aside from NDP members who will run as independents.
