Political analysts doubt the ability of the Arab Democratic Nasserist Party to make a breakthrough in November's parliamentary polls, Mona El-Nahhas writes Four weeks from the ballot box and the downtown headquarters of the Nasserist Party is eerily quiet. The offices are almost deserted, with just a handful of employees sitting at their desks. "Senior party officials, potential candidates and party members are often here these days. There was quite a crowd yesterday afternoon," said one employee. It does not sound like a party on the brink of success. But then the Nasserists have been in retreat for years, torn by divisions, internal disputes and collective resignations. Membership of the party has shrunk to a few hundred, and beyond the holding of occasional seminars and meetings with other opposition leaders, its presence on the political scene is negligible. The party's ailing leader, 84-year-old Diaaeddin Dawoud, may still be chairman, but he, like many of the party's senior officials, does not attend party meetings. In the absence of Dawoud the reins of power are firmly in the hands of the party's secretary-general Ahmed Hassan. "Since he took the post of the secretary-general in 2002 Hassan has concentrated control in his own hands," says Farouk El-Ashri, a former member of the party's Political Bureau. According to El-Ashri and members of the party's reformist front, Hassan takes charge of compiling party membership lists. He exercises complete control of finances and the party's newspaper is under his direct management. He has also, they claim, packed the Political Bureau and the secretariat-general with his supporters, using the extensive prerogatives granted by the party's statutes to the secretary-general. "It was no wonder that the Nasserist Party has seen its appeal eroded. The public increasingly feels that the party is redundant," political analyst Amr Hashem Rabie told Al-Ahram Weekly. Nasserist cadres have disappeared from universities, civil society organisations, trade unions and syndicates. "Why should the public trust a political party that talks about political and economic reform and yet has proved incapable of reforming itself," asks Rabie. "Deep down, a Nasserist sees himself as a leader who should be obeyed. Differences in opinion are not accepted by Nasserists. They only hear themselves." It may be cod-psychology but it goes some way to explaining the endless disputes that have convulsed the party since it was founded in 1992. "The leadership of the party is its weak point. The party desperately needs to elect a new leader to replace the ailing Dawoud," says Rabie. Then, he believes, it might be able to scrutinise its fundamental ideology -- the espousal of nationalist and socialist ideas -- in the light of current conditions. Rabie also believes the party's internal statutes should be amended to clearly define the responsibilities of senior officials, and that they should be restricted to two terms in their posts. Only then, he thinks, will the party be able to address the difficult task of making itself a democratic organisation. Even should it succeed Rabie doubts that Nasserists who have resigned their membership will flock back in any numbers. While agreeing with Rabie, political analyst Mustafa Kamel El-Sayed also cites emergency laws and the restrictions imposed by the state on all opposition parties as contributing to the Nasserists' weakness. "As long as it is banned from meeting with the public or taking to the street, how can any party maintain any contact with people?" he asks. El-Sayed also points to the serious financial crisis afflicting the party. "I think this contributed to its failure in the last parliamentary poll, which was in any case marred by a host of electoral irregularities." Divided into several conflicting camps and unable to offer its candidates financial support for their campaigns, El-Sayed doubts the party's ability to successfully fight elections in which, he says, there are no guarantees that the vote will be free and fair. El-Sayed questions recent speculation that the Nasserists are part of a secret deal concluded between the NDP and opposition parties. "The Nasserist Party does not practise the political game in the way the ruling NDP wants. It has refused to launch the kind of attacks on the Muslim Brotherhood that the Tagammu Party indulges in. If there is a reward for ignoring calls to boycott the election it is unlikely to exceed more than four or five parliamentary seats as far as the Nasserists are concerned." Rabie suspects that figure is on the low side, and that 10 or more seats is more likely. "In return for lending legitimacy to the would-be electoral process through taking part in the polls all opposition parties, even the smaller ones, will be offered seats to replace the MB." And the presence of licensed opposition parties in parliament, he points out, will help them field candidates in the presidential elections scheduled for 2011, lending legitimacy to next year's poll as well.
