Despite the country's long history of parliamentary democracy, only a minority of Egyptian citizens vote, Salah Eissa* explains Egypt's first nationally elected parliament met for the first time on 25 November 1866. Before the meeting started, the then minister of interior, Sherif Pasha, entered the room to give the new MPs a piece of advice. It was usual in European countries with a tradition of parliamentary government, he said, for pro-government MPs to sit on the right and opposition MPs to sit on the left. He had hardly finished speaking, when all the MPs present moved to the right side of the room. Sherif Pasha objected, and everyone moved to the left. Exasperated, he begged them to sit wherever they wanted. The reason why the then ruler of Egypt, the Khedive Ismail, created the parliament was because he had over-borrowed from European lenders, and these lenders were now reluctant to give him any more money. As a result, the khedive thought that rather than continue to borrow against his own personal estate, it would be better if the country had something approaching a parliamentary government, such that he could continue to borrow against the state budget and perhaps even get further credit from local dignitaries and landowners. Those voting for members of this first parliament and qualified to present themselves as candidates were limited to village mayors, religious scholars and leading businessmen. This first Egyptian parliament had only advisory powers. As the problem of the debt got worse, many members of the parliament moved to the left, effectively challenging the government and demanding the right of oversight. In the penultimate session before the parliament was dissolved, MPs demanded that the country's finances be brought under parliamentary control. The khedive reacted by ending the session before its scheduled recess, the parliament reacting by challenging the khedive's decision. Opposition leader Abdel-Salam El-Moweilhi borrowed a phrase attributed to Mirabeau, one of the leaders of the French Revolution, to the effect that "we shall yield to nothing but bayonets." While Egypt's parliamentary tradition may have started with a desire to emulate procedures common at the time in Europe, it soon became more grounded and more serious. In 1882, with the Orabi Revolution in full swing, a new constitution was drawn up granting MPs extensive powers of legislation and oversight. A new parliament was elected, though this lasted for only one session, as the British army occupied Egypt soon afterwards. The occupation authorities then installed a succession of rubber-stamp legislative councils which had little more than nominal powers. The first was Maglis Shura Al-Qawanin (Advisory Council for Legislation), followed by the Al-Gameya Al-Omoumeya (General Assembly) and the Al-Gameya Al-Tashrieya (Legislative Assembly). Later, the 1919 Revolution brought the 1923 constitution into being, under the terms of which Egypt came the closest it ever got to constitutional monarchy. Under this constitution, a two-tier election system was put in place, with MPs elected by super electors who had themselves been elected by groups of 30 or so voters. This awkward system was abolished by the first parliament elected in this way, and direct voting then became the rule in Egyptian parliamentary elections, the only exceptions being for further two-tier elections conducted under the 1930 constitution. Single- candidate elections, with individual candidates presenting themselves for election in the country's various constituencies, became the norm, with the exception of the 1984 elections, which used a party list system and the 1987 elections, which combined party lists with single-candidate contests. It has now been a century and a half since Egyptians first exercised their voting rights, but enthusiasm for voting in elections is hardly commensurate with this long history. The turnout in elections is a mere 25 per cent of registered voters on average, and far fewer people turn out to vote in urban areas. This is paradoxical, since ordinarily one would expect to see heightened public interest in politics in cities and large towns. However, in Egypt it is in the countryside that more people vote, presumably driven by clan loyalties. It is also remarkable how voters assess the worth of the candidates presented to them in Egyptian elections. Candidates are often weighed up in terms of what they can offer to a particular village or even a particular street. Political vision or efficiency don't seem to matter much to voters, and whether a candidate is capable of proposing and monitoring legislation or exercising oversight over the country's affairs is often beside the point. One reason for this is that Egyptians have historically been denied the right to vote for long periods, either that or there was no room for choice when they were in fact called upon to vote. The first wave of elections, beginning in 1866 and reaching a peak with the Orabi Revolution in 1882, ended in a parliamentary vacuum that lasted until 1924. Even after that, election fraud was common. Interior minister Ismail Sidqi rigged the 1925 elections, and irregularities marred the elections of 1931, 1938 and 1944. In the post-1952 period, president Gamal Abdel-Nasser decided that people had had enough of rigged elections, so he just banned people he considered undesirable from running for office. Abdel-Nasser gave the Al-Ittihad Al-Ishteraki (Socialist Union) of the time the right to select candidates on political grounds, followed by a law banning certain individuals from the country's political life on the grounds that they were "enemies of the nation". It is true that the three parliamentary elections carried out under Nasser's rule were held without extensive interference from the state. However, since there was only a single party to vote for, voters did not see why they should go to the polls in the first place. Even when political pluralism was reintroduced, the electorate did not seem to regain its interest in elections. Those who remained interested in the political scene were chiefly those for whom politics represented a means of currying favour or gaining influence. Political pluralism was reintroduced in 1976, but it was a far cry from what had been lost in 1953. It was pluralism in name only, since the governing party remained in control. The country has thus far failed to regain its parliamentary or public spirit, and instead we have MPs who are elected for essentially private reasons. Many MPs act as mediators between government and voters, their job being to ensure that services are provided to their constituencies. They themselves benefit from state commissions, and they sometimes provide financial inducements to voters to vote them into office. If elections were really free, MPs would not need to be reminded of whether they should sit on the right or the left. Until we have genuinely free elections, our MPs will continue to sit on the right, and the left- hand seats will remain empty. * The writer is editor-in-chief of Al-Qahira weekly newspaper.
