Longtime Nasserist Party leader Diaaeddin Dawoud placed the blame for his electoral downfall everywhere but on himself, reports Mustafa El-Menshawy The Nasserist Party's headquarters is in a shabby, century-old downtown building. At 79, the party's leader is nearly as old. Diaaeddin Dawoud has led the Nasserists since 1992, consistently rejecting calls to step down and give younger Nasserists a chance to map their party's future. That attitude was starkly highlighted again earlier this month, when Dawoud failed to secure a parliamentary seat for the third consecutive time. Despite the loss, Dawoud appeared defiant; he said security violations were the true culprit. "Would you believe that police besieged almost every part of the constituency in which I was running?" Dawoud lost to National Democratic Party candidate Mohamed Queta in the run-off of the final round of balloting on 7 December. That round was especially bloody, with four people killed and several others injured after police denied would-be voters access to the polls. Dawoud said he himself was unable to leave his house in Damietta after police cordoned it off for no obvious reason, and without prior notice. In Dawoud's birthplace, a village called El-Rouda, only a few people ended up voting. The results were similarly disappointing for the 34 other Nasserist Party candidates, meaning the party will have absolutely no parliamentary representation until at least 2010. Only parties with at least five per cent of the assembly's seats, meanwhile, will be able to field a presidential candidate. Prominent Al-Ahram columnist Salama Ahmed Salama and other commentators have been urging the leaders of secular opposition forces like the Nasserist Party to resign. "The results are tantamount to a kiss of death for those parties," Salama wrote on Tuesday. Mohamed El-Sayed Said of Al-Ahram's Centre for Political and Strategic Studies called opposition party leaders "despots". Dawoud, meanwhile, continues to adamantly refuse the idea of resigning. "I am the only old man in the party," he said, raising his thick white eyebrows in wonder. "Seventy per cent of the party's leaders are young people who are less than 50 years old." His comments belie recent press reports that the party is in the midst of an old guard versus new guard internal struggle over reform. It is ironic, then, that Dawoud's campaign platform was based on opening the door for democratic reforms and rotation of power. He did not rule out running again in 2010. Dawoud admitted that the outlawed but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood group was clearly more organised than the front that brought the three main opposition parties -- the Nasserists, Wafd and Tagammu -- together. The Nasserists lost all three of the seats it held in the outgoing assembly. Although Dawoud credited the Brotherhood's success to skilful use of violence and blackmail, analysts have said the group managed -- via the provision of social services through a vast network of activists -- to draw voters away from secular opposition parties accused of being detached from the real problems facing ordinary Egyptians. Dawoud unveiled a plan to reinvigorate his party by pooling the resources of other secular opposition forces. "We have plans to enlist more young people in running the party and making it more popular," he said. Even though he believes that there is an enormous potential base of Nasserist sympathisers amongst the general public, Dawoud linked the success of such plans to government behaviour. "The government should reconsider the way it deals with opposition parties by allowing them a margin of freedom to play politics, and adopt democracy." Along with other opposition leaders, Dawoud has accused the government of placing barriers ranging from intimidation to administrative obstruction in front of the opposition. Analysts and observers may agree with that, but they also tend to be more cynical about why the Nasserists fared so badly. The key would seem to be the party's 79-year-old leader not really practising what he preaches.
