The NDP's influential Policy Secretariat and its Chairman Gamal Mubarak are back in the limelight after a high-level ruling party reshuffle. Gamal Essam El-Din reports Last year's presidential and parliamentary elections -- and their accompanying calls for democratic and constitutional reform -- were rough on the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). So rough that the NDP's Policy Secretariat -- which had positioned itself as the nation's liberal democratic voice -- chose not to meet over the course of the last six months of 2005, while those elections took place. Last week, though, the party's flagship committee was back in action, and its head -- President Hosni Mubarak's 43- year-old son Gamal -- in the limelight again, as a significant party shake-up catapulted Gamal to the NDP's highest echelons. With Gamal Mubarak now serving as the NDP's assistant secretary-general for policy affairs, the party's recent leadership shake-up has clearly tilted the boat in favour of younger secretariat members who are Gamal's close associates. At least 20 of the secretariat's 29 members are thought to be firmly in his camp. Seven of them -- Ahmed Ezz, Mohamed Kamal, Hossam Badrawi, Youssef Boutros Ghali, Mahmoud Mohieddin, Rashid Mohamed Rashid and Anas El-Fiqi -- are in their late 30s or early 40s, and are likely to provide a strong counterbalance to the party's old guard stalwarts: Safwat El-Sherif; Zakaria Azmi; and Moufid Shehab. In fact these three remaining old guard members look to be heavily outnumbered by their younger colleagues, all of whom are firm believers in market economy and privatisation policies. Businessman Ahmed Ezz's promotion -- he is now the party's secretary for organisational affairs -- was the shake up's most controversial feature. Ezz -- who owns a conglomerate of iron and ceramic monopolies -- already chairs parliament's planning and budget committee. Many observers said Ezz only manages to play these roles -- some of which may involve potential conflicts of interest -- with Gamal Mubarak's support. Others interpreted Ezz's latest promotion as a reward for his role in masterminding and funding President Mubarak's election campaign. The newly formed, 29-member secretariat-general met on Sunday. According to Alieddin Hilal, the NDP's new secretary for information, leading party officials decided to plan a full day of meetings with Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif at the Nasr City Conference Centre next Saturday; the sessions "will include nine discussions aimed at forging ties between the government and the party, and developing a kind of consensus on forthcoming economic and political reform issues," Hilal said. Meanwhile, the party's Higher Council for Policies, also led by Gamal Mubarak, is scheduled to meet today. The first of two planned sessions will be devoted to reviewing the party's parliamentary elections performance, with leading NDP officials being asked for their opinions and evaluations. The chairmen of the party's 26 provincial offices will be scrutinised, with a view to deciding who should stay, and who should go. NDP insiders think as many as 19 may be sacked. "These are the governorates in which the NDP fared the worst, where provincial chairmen failed to mobilise for the party's candidates," an informed NDP official told Al-Ahram Weekly. The second session will debate the Policy Secretariat's role. Widely lambasted during parliamentary elections, the committee has often been seen as a vehicle for Gamal Mubarak's political fortunes, more than any sort of engine for national reform. The Secretariat apparently miscalculated, the NDP official said, when it assumed that "people base their votes more on campaign platforms than individual and family relationships." In a recent interview, Gamal conceded that both the party and the secretariat had fared poorly at the polls, but he blamed that on the economy more than anything else. Today's meeting will listen to some of these critiques. In any case, with the re-shuffle, some of the most prominent members of the party's old guard were shown the door. These include Kamal El-Shazli, Mamdouh El-Beltagui and Hussein Kamel Bahaaeddin, all former ministers. El-Shazli, for one, was the NDP's parliamentary whip for 17 years. It was Ezz who replaced him as head of organisational affairs. NDP insiders attribute El-Shazli's downfall to a long record of allegedly shady practices, as well as his continued lack of harmony with Gamal Mubarak. The shake-up's casualties also included El-Sayed Rashed, chairman of the General Federation for Trade Unions, and Abul- Abbas Othman. Mohamed Abdel-Halim replaced Rashed as secretary for workers, while Ahmed Mansi Ibrahim replaced Othman as secretary for farmers. Rashed and Othman both lost their seats in last year's parliamentary elections. Three women were also appointed to the new secretariat: Manpower Minister Aisha Abdel-Hadi; former Environment Minister Nadia Makram Ebeid; and economist Yomna El-Hamaki. Ebeid and Finance Minister Ghali are the secretariat's only two Coptic members.
