While there has been little change among the opposition parties since the 2005 parliamentary elections, wider changes in the political climate mean that the 2010 elections will yield very different results, writes Wahid Abdel-Meguid* The difference between the 2010 electoral map and that of 2005 is one of form rather than substance. Instead of the consensus that existed among the opposition forces and parties to participate in the 2005 parliamentary elections, today there is a division between participators and boycotters. The coordination between the opposition parties and forces that marked the 2005 elections, taking the form of a hastily declared "National Front", has completely vanished this time around. Indeed, parties that have been allied since 2007 in what they have called a "Democratic Coalition" have been unable to reach an agreement on coordinating their campaigns in the forthcoming elections. Not that they have tried very seriously. They have not even been able to agree on the question of participation, and the Democratic Front, one of the four parties in this coalition, is boycotting the elections. However, while all this suggests that the country's opposition forces and parties were much more cohesive in 2005 than they are today, the fact is that division still lurked beneath the façade of collective meetings and joint statements even in 2005. Coordinated campaigns were the exception not the rule in the 2005 elections, even though the number of opposition candidates with any chance of success did not exceed half the number of parliamentary seats on offer in the elections. Most of these candidates were from the Muslim Brotherhood, which limited its candidates to 150 in the 2005 elections. Candidates with any prospect of success from the other opposition forces did not exceed 100 at the outside. Despite this, competition was particularly fierce between some Muslim Brotherhood candidates and those from other opposition parties or independents in some electoral districts. In the final results, Muslim Brotherhood candidates won four times as many seats as the other opposition parties or independents. The 88 seats won by the Muslim Brotherhood in the 2005 parliamentary elections out of a total of 444 yielded the largest parliamentary opposition bloc to have existed in the country since the introduction of restricted multi-party elections in the mid-1970s. The Brotherhood's 88 seats were considerably more than the 58 won by the Wafd- Brotherhood alliance in the 1984 elections. However, the political climate that prevailed in 2005, making it possible for candidates from an officially banned organisation to achieve a political breakthrough, has changed today. It is this change in climate, rather than any change in the political map, that is the most important difference between the 2005 elections and those that are about to be held. In 2005, the Muslim Brotherhood enjoyed an unprecedented degree of manoeuvrability because the authorities wanted to make a positive impression on the international community and obviate any possible US intervention on the pretext of promoting democracy. Only two and a half years had passed since the US launched its assault on the Middle East, taking Iraq as its starting point, and the then president Bush and his neoconservative administration were homing in on the idea of democratic transformation in the region. Today, that era has passed, and the US has returned to its customary pragmatism. This has coincided with an escalation in the confrontation between the Muslim Brotherhood and the regime, meaning that the Brotherhood's hopes of retaining even half the seats it won in 2005 may be out of reach. The change in the wider climate will have a huge impact on the distribution of seats to emerge in the new parliament, even if it has not had any obvious effect on the parties and political forces entering the elections. Parliamentary gains of varying degrees can probably be anticipated for the larger opposition parties, such as the Wafd and Tagammu, while the smaller ones will probably retain token representation of one seat or so. However, again, gains made by the larger opposition parties will have less to do with changes in the electoral map than with changes in the wider political climate and the conduct of the electoral process. In fact, apart from the boycott announced by the opposition National Democratic Front, which did not exist in 2005, and by protest movements that do not regard taking part in elections as being one of their functions, the electoral map is pretty much the same as it was in 2005. Even the Al-Karama (Dignity) Party, which is awaiting a licence and has vowed to boycott the elections, has exempted three of its leaders from this pledge. Such inconsistencies appear to be one of the salient features of the elections, and they attest to the disarray that has gripped the country's opposition parties and forces, including those that stand to increase their parliamentary representation as a result of the government's shift in approach towards the Muslim Brotherhood, going from a policy of containment to attempts to eliminate it from the political arena. Confusion among the opposition parties first set in over calls to boycott the elections, which were spearheaded by the National Association for Change. Such appeals put opposition party leaders and the Muslim Brotherhood into an awkward position, because they had been set on taking part in the elections when the boycott calls arose. The leaders of the three parties in the Democratic Coalition, who had already begun their campaigns, resorted to political manoeuvring and issued a list of demands for electoral guarantees, declaring that their decision to take part would be contingent on the government's response to their demands. This list was presented to the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), rather than to any government agency, and although the NDP's response was almost a refusal, it was worded diplomatically enough for the three parties to take it as accepting their demands. Consequently, these three parties went ahead with their plans to participate in the elections. Not long after this, the opposition forces and parties entered into a further phase of mutual recrimination. Those that had agreed to participate in the elections charged the advocates of a boycott with handing a gift to the government and the ruling party. For their part, the boycotters hurled back essentially the same accusation, describing the agreement to participate as collusion and in effect prettifying ugly elections. As inconsistencies in position and contradictory behaviour spread among the opposition forces, the symptoms of their chronic problems became more and more acute. Foremost among them have been petty conflicts and infighting, leading to further fragmentation of the country's opposition. The activist scene, like the opposition party arena, has teemed with dozens of splinter groups, only detracting from their already limited political assets. The situation has reached the point where a group of no more than 30 or 40 people would then split into a further three or four splinter groups. American journalist Jeffrey Fleishman has picked up on this problem. In a Los Angeles Times article in June, he remarked on the cracks that had begun to show in the National Association for Change as a result of spite and personal ambitions, and the problems experienced by the association are only a small sample of what is now ailing the whole gamut of opposition movements, parties, organisations and societies. As the 2010 electoral map reveals, the illness that has infected the country's opposition parties and forces is growing worse by the day and its symptoms are becoming ever more pronounced. For decades, no physician has been able to prescribe an appropriate cure, even though the symptoms of this political disease are glaringly obvious: division and fragmentation, an apparent inability to engage in dialogue or criticise tradition, the feebleness of any culture of consensus-building, and an apparent incapacity to find ways of working together according to a common agenda and towards common goals. So intractable have these symptoms been, that whenever the opposition forces do reach some kind of understanding by some fluke or other, this quickly degenerates into a kind of tragic farce, as occurred with the declaration issued by the National Democratic Front on the eve of the 2005 elections. That declaration aimed to hammer together an electoral coalition that would field candidates on a single electoral list. However, before you knew it there were at least three kinds of list: a shaky list agreed upon by the coalition, separate lists including "partners" in the coalition, and separate lists of other opposition forces not taking part in the coalition. The result was the exciting, if confusing, scene of the opposition forces shaking hands and then trying to throttle each other at more or less the same time. Not that such a display of division and disarray in the opposition was new or unforeseeable, and the same applies to the current divisions among the country's opposition parties over whether or not to participate in the forthcoming elections. We've seen the same performance many times over, albeit with some changes in cast, scenario and artistic direction. There have been attempts to organise mutual support and joint campaigns among opposition parties and forces since 1984. However, each attempt has either foundered or has produced an unworkable formula. Collective action will remain a pipe dream as long as its advocates remain incapable of building bridges with those who do not share their views, whether inside the different parties or in other groups. The seething differences and atmosphere of mutual mistrust that characterised the coalition between the Wafd Party and the Muslim Brotherhood in 1984 set the pattern. That experience was a powerful indicator of how feeble coalition politics are in our country today, in spite of the fact that the electoral list system offers a greater prospect for the success of this type of cooperation than the individual candidate system. However, the country's opposition has yet to fathom the lessons of the 1984 experience and subsequent failures. Despite the five elections that have been held since then, they are still at square one: barely able to listen to one another, faltering, confused, and erratic in their actions and positions. * The writer is director of Al-Ahram Centre for Translation and Publishing.
