The parliamentary elections race is on but the winner might have been already decided, writes Fatemah Farag "It seems that the honeymoon we were living with our wonderful government during the presidential elections has gone with no return," laments Mohsen Hassanein in October magazine this week. "The government is now showing us its wooden face, and after it insisted on increasing the price of garbage collection and insisted on coercing our payment through adding it onto the electric bill, Mohamed Abdel-Zaher, head of the Water Works Authority, announced that the price of water will increase next month. This means that the government is opening the door to the private sector to also increase the cost of services and commodities and increase the suffering of citizens in turn." To understand the timing of these actions, argues Hassanein, is to link them to the upcoming parliamentary elections. "Either the government is positive that it will continue to exist after the parliamentary elections and so it is doing what it pleases, or it is sure it is on its way out and so it is being a spoil sport." Whatever the case, everyone in the press has their sights on next month's elections and the dynamics that will shape the outcome. "Before the Egyptian people is a historic opportunity to improve the nation's situation and set its course for the years ahead," said Abbas El-Tarabili in Al-Wafd on 17 October. "The chance is available to undertake the change the nation has been dreaming of, namely the election of a real parliament reflective of the ambitions of the nation at this critical time," he added, calling on people to participate in the poll. But Abdel-Halim Qandil in Al-Arabi says, "do not pin your hopes on the parliamentary elections. In Egypt, there are no elections in the literal sense of the word. Rather, there are celebrations and fanfare... [N]o sane person can think that the elections will end in anything genuinely new; it is simply an exercise of walking within one's shoe." Qandil is joined in his pessimism by Wael El-Ibrashi in Sawt Al-Umma who says, "there is nothing new in the upcoming elections -- the same corruption, oppression and forgery which the NDP has drowned the country in for over a quarter of a century." He documents the case of the death of Souad Toaylab who was running against the NDP in Abu Hamad and was run over last week. "Toaylab was murdered after she refused to give up her candidacy and after she refused LE150,000 from the NDP to give up her campaign," claims El-Ibrashi. Perhaps the tactics of the NDP are not that extreme. However, Salah Eissa takes issue with NDP strategies in Al-Wafd on 15 October with reference to the running of Minister of Public Business Mahmoud Mohieddin against Tagammu candidate and veteran politician Khaled Mohieddin in Kafr Shukr. The NDP nomination, says Eissa, "is a clear manifestation of the NDP policy to enter the elections with a list that covers all of the electoral circles and all of the parliamentary seats, competing with every opposition party candidate. This is a policy that contradicts the promises made by Mubarak in his electoral programme. He [the president] promised an electoral system that would provide a balanced parliament but it is clear now that the NDP has not given up -- yet -- its hegemony of society and state." But the NDP has its own problems to contend with. Ibrahim Seada, in his back page column in Al-Akhbar on 17 October, took issue with National Democratic Party members who were not chosen and so are nominating themselves as independents -- a state of affairs which took place in the last round of parliamentary elections and after "independents" were welcomed back into the NDP. He tells these insurgent members: "I was told by a senior NDP member, Hossam Badrawi, that the party today is not what it used to be. To me that means that the party will not hesitate to expel you and will not accept the membership of those of you who do win in the upcoming elections." Momtaz El-Qot in Al-Akhbar on 15 October expresses his fears for the ruling party. "These people [the insurgents] -- even though they are a minority -- represent a great danger because they will attempt to weaken the nominees chosen by the ruling party in a desperate attempt to show that the party made the wrong choice and that they were more capable of winning." El-Qot goes on to point out, "President Mubarak has presented us with an ideal in all phases of the presidential elections and he confirmed that people will not last -- but the party will." However, Karam Gabr in Rose El-Youssef magazine this week says, "it is in my opinion -- an opinion I expressed many times in the parliamentary elections of 2000 -- that the leadership of the NDP should not go too far in its threats to expel those who are against the candidate choices made by the party. [Because] the party -- and this is most probable -- will be forced to kiss the hands it has cut off and hug the head it has done away with. So why should the party sink the lifeboats it might need if there is a storm?"
