Egypt's spring was full of promise -- short-lived but unprecedented in scope following decades of political stagnation Talk of political reform was in the spring air, reports Dina Ezzat, when President Hosni Mubarak announced his surprise decision to amend the constitution to allow for the first ever multi-candidate presidential elections. The bombshell announcement was followed by a hot summer of heated political debate over the value of the adopted constitutional amendment. Some praised it for putting an end to the rule of presidential succession in effect since the July Revolution. It was severely criticised by others for allowing only political parties with control of a considerable number of parliamentary seats to field presidential candidates. In the meantime, long silent voices finally broke their quiet to shout about having had enough of the regime. The president, his family and his aides were taken to task by angry demonstrators who took to the capital's streets in a rare show of public protest against the 24 years of Mubarak's rule. The crowds were nowhere near as big as the thousands who demonstrated against the US invasion of Iraq in 2002, but they were vocal and, more importantly, unafraid to express their frustration with the government -- in public. For his part, the president refrained from paying much attention to this unusual demonstration of political frustration, or for that matter the heavy-handed security people who sometimes tried to halt the disobedience. Instead, he reiterated his promise that his son Gamal's succession to power was out of the question. He promised free and fair presidential and legislative elections; he promised major decentralisation plans; and above all he promised an end to the emergency law imposed since October 1981 when former president Anwar El-Sadat was assassinated, and Mubarak, then Sadat's vice-president, was selected via referendum to rule. In the September presidential elections, Mubarak cruised to a comfortable 80 per cent majority win -- a huge figure by almost any standard, but a refreshing change from the over 95 per cent that Mubarak and all his predecessors were used to getting. Ghad Party leader Ayman Nour, the youngest political figure on the scene, came second to Mubarak with not much more than 10 per cent of the votes. Candidates of other political parties, including Noaman Gomaa of the prestigious Al-Wafd, were left far behind. Many blamed these results on decades of one-man rule, others on state-run media's intensive exercises in brainwashing. At the end of the day, there was also widespread resentment at the opposition's humble performance, a lackluster showing that, for right or wrong, the regime was also held responsible for. Critics stressed that the superficial nature of the amendment of Article 76 placed too many constraints on independent candidates, and allowed only members of political parties to run. So, while the general sentiment was that Mubarak had won the presidential elections fair and square, he was blamed for winning because the competition was weak. Similar sentiments accompanied the recent parliamentary elections. Out of the over 400 candidates fielded by the Mubarak-chaired National Democratic Party (NDP), only slightly over 100 won. The NDP could only secure the majority of the assembly by re-instating the membership of defecting candidates who ran and won as independents. Within NDP ranks, and especially amongst Gamal Mubarak and his associates, the party's old guard was held responsible for the spiralling decline. According to high-ranking NDP members, the president himself was concerned that the party in its current form, ageing and out of touch with the people and even with its own cadres, was unable to live up to people's expectations or project the image of a vibrant political body able to implement the ambitious platform he promoted while campaigning for the presidential elections. Criticism of NDP-related violence against candidates and voters, especially those with membership in, or sympathy to, the Muslim Brotherhood, has become overt; for commentators, even those known for their association with the regime, the legislative elections, which killed 12 people, injured hundreds and led to the arrest of perhaps hundreds more, were testimony that the promises and hopes of political reform unveiled by the president in the spring had been dashed by realistic political facts on the ground. The apathy of over 70 per cent of registered voters who skipped the parliamentary ballot box was a damning indictment. By the year's end, hopes were hanging on any sort of concrete reform news. Last week, the president held an extensive meeting with his judiciary advisors to construct a legislative plan of action that some think will introduce a way out of the emergency law. This week's cabinet shuffle, meanwhile, was a mixed bag; Mubarak did get rid of some of the so-called "hated public faces", but many also remained. Will winter re-kindle a glimmer of optimism about the president's vision of reform? Only if critics who think the regime is incapable or unwilling to introduce reforms are proved wrong, via hard facts on the ground.
