Tagammu leader explains his party's dismal parliamentary elections performance to Mohamed El-Sayed Secular politics might have been the biggest casualty of the just-completed parliamentary elections. While the Muslim Brotherhood's performance stunned all observers, losses at parties like the left- leaning Tagammu were all but staggering. Despite the fact that the 29-year-old party was part of a wider opposition coalition under the banner of the United National Front for Change (UNFC), only two of the Tagammu's 59 candidates won seats. has been at the party's helm since December 2003. In an interview this week, he tried to explain why the Tagammu did so poorly. The party was between the devil and the deep blue sea, El-Said said, attacked on both sides by the elections' two biggest forces -- the National Democratic Party (NDP) and the Muslim Brotherhood. The NDP, for one, decided to take revenge on the Tagammu "for sticking to our principles," El-Said said. "The party protested against the amendment of constitutional Article 76, which has placed crippling conditions on anyone who wants to run for president. The party thus boycotted the referendum on the amendment of that article, and refused to serve as a political prop by nominating a candidate for the presidential elections." El-Said said the party "paid dearly in the parliamentary elections for our standing on these issues." In the meantime, because "the party categorically refused to mix religion with politics," El-Said said -- referring to the Tagammu's refusal to ally itself, or even coordinate, with the Muslim Brotherhood in the elections -- the "government's stance towards us was even harsher than their stance against the outlawed Brotherhood." According to El-Said, the NDP even allied with the Brotherhood in several constituencies to oust Tagammu candidates. El-Said also blamed his party's poor performance on larger campaign funding issues. "I had suggested an amendment to the elections draft law outlining and regulating campaign spending. Safwat El-Sherif and Kamal El-Shazly, [respectively secretary-general and assistant secretary- general of the NDP], agreed to include the suggestion in the new law. However, they ignored it when the law was finally drafted. Since they were positive that NDP candidates were rich enough to buy votes, they refused to include the spending amendment. They forgot, however, that there was another group [the Brotherhood] that also has money and can spend generously on campaigns." In El-Said's view, the opposition front was "naïve" when it called upon voters to "take money from the [NDP and other rich] candidates, but vote for candidates they deemed more deserving. Unfortunately, the NDP and other rich candidates devised new ways to make sure people voted for them." Voters themselves were not to blame, however. "Over the years, the public has become impoverished. They were forced to accept bribes to fulfil their basic needs and feed their children. At the same time, people long ago lost confidence in the so- called People's Assembly. Voters have always seen parliament as a servant of the government, and so they don't care who will represent them in that parliament. They saw the bribes being paid for their votes as the only way they might benefit from the overall political process." Critics of El-Said and the Tagammu have argued that because the party has often allowed itself to be used by the government to launch attacks on Islamists, it has lost its grassroots supporters from the labour class. The evidence is clear, they said, in the fact that prominent Tagammu figures like Khaled Mohieddin, El-Badri Farghali and Abul-Ezz El-Hariri all lost their seats. El-Said's interpretation is that because these three Tagammu MPs "were a thorn in the government's side, a group of businessmen and the Brotherhood wanted to kick them out of parliament at any price." In general, El-Said said, the NDP's old guard wanted to "let the Islamic genie out of the bottle for two reasons. First, the old guard wanted to send the new guard a message: that if you choose to do without our services, you will have to face the Islamic genie, and only we [the old guard] are capable of containing this genie's power." Letting the "Islamic genie" out of the bottle, El-Said said, "was also meant to teach all parties, domestic and foreign, a lesson: if you want democracy, this will be the result; you have to deal with Islamists." El-Said discounted the idea that the Tagammu could have allied with the Islamists in pursuit of a common goal like democratic reform. "You ally with other forces to change the situation for the better, not the worse. If we allied with the Brotherhood, would it commit itself to democracy that involves respecting their opponents' opinions, giving women their rights, etc? I am dead sure the Brotherhood will not commit themselves to democracy. Therefore, I cannot ally with them." The Brotherhood has not changed its opinion on any issue since it was established 77 years ago, El-Said maintained. "As a history professor, I have comprehensively studied the Brotherhood. All extremist groups were products of the Brotherhood's ideology." Despite its dismal parliamentary elections performance, El-Said remains sanguine about the party's future. "Yes, we have lost this battle, but we will review our strategy. We will also continue sticking to our principles no matter what the price."
