The future of the reform process will be determined by the parliamentary, not the presidential, elections, writes Hassan Nafaa* For the first time in their long history Egyptians went to the polls yesterday to choose a president from among several rival candidates. Although the votes are still being counted the results are a foregone conclusion. Barring an unimaginable surprise President Hosni Mubarak will win a comfortable majority, even without rigging. The incumbent, who has had his term renewed several times through popular referendum will have it renewed once again, this time through the ballot box. Yet Mubarak's victory in Egypt's first multi-candidate presidential elections will not salvage the system of government over which he has presided for 24 years for the problem does not reside in the person of the current president, who was the best of the candidates on offer, but in structure of a system that long ago passed its sell-by date. Our current system of government, established by the July 1952 Revolution, concentrates power in the hands of the president. It was expected that the transition from a single to a multi-party state, which began in the mid-1970s, would help correct this imbalance. Yet the reverse proved true. The presidency acquired yet more powers, a trend consolidated in 1978 when the president also became the head of the ruling party. The more autocratic the system of rule, the more contingent it becomes on the personality of the president. Under such an order there is an intrinsic relationship between the crises encountered by the regime and the method of transferring authority. In more than half a century the office of president has been vacated only twice, once with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's death from natural causes on 28 September 1970, and then when Anwar El-Sadat was assassinated on 6 October 1981. On both occasions power passed smoothly to the vice-president. In selecting their vice-presidents both Abdel-Nasser and El-Sadat were choosing their successors. In the absence of any legislative or constitutional principles regulating this choice the succession was as authoritarian as in any hereditary system. On both occasions, thankfully, transfer of power occurred without the conflicts that have tended to dog the process of succession in authoritarian regimes. Mubarak seems to have been sufficiently uncomfortable with this system to seek to change it. His decision was not a sudden brainstorm. In the 24 years since first taking office he has refused to appoint a vice- president. As the time approached for the referendum that would have automatically given him a fifth term he felt that domestic, regional and international conditions had made the time ripe for a new mode of establishing the legitimacy of the president. He called Article 76 of the constitution to be amended in order to provide for direct multi-candidate presidential elections. There can be no denying the formal significance of this amendment in terms of restoring sovereignty to the people. Unfortunately this major turning point coincided with the growing political profile of Gamal Mubarak. Many linked the two developments and began to sense that something new and unfamiliar was afoot. The conclusion they drew was that the president was grooming his son for the presidency and setting the scene for his succession. The president has repeatedly denied such rumours. Yet it seems that the more insistent the denials the stronger some people's conviction grew that his son would be shooed into the presidency and that the only question was how it was going to be stage- managed. Shortly after this article appears the election results will be announced. They will not pack any surprises. There will be the inevitable post-mortem. In the next few days, and weeks, a great deal of ink will be spilled flaws in the electoral process. Voter turnout, invalidated ballots and the distribution of support for the various candidates will all be discussed and then the clamour will die down. What will remain is a reinvigorated political scene. Many may doubt the sincerity of the government's intentions to press forward with political reform. After these elections, though, there can be no turning the clock back. The expectations that have been raised are such that any attempt to do so, or any foot-dragging by the government on its reform pledges, will have dire consequences. More immediately, public attention will turn to the forthcoming parliamentary elections. These, I believe, will truly demarcate the boundary between two phases, for after the parliamentary poll it will become possible to put the government's intentions to the test. The forthcoming parliamentary elections will be crucial in shaping our immediate future, as well as the future of our system of government. Because of the amendment of constitutional Article 76, it will no longer be necessary for the ruling party to control two-thirds of parliamentary seats, the ratio it had once needed -- and used every means in its power to secure -- in order to nominate the president and present its nominee in a public referendum. The forthcoming elections now present the ruling party with a different set of problems since they will determine which political forces have the right to field candidates in the next presidential elections. The parties entering parliamentary elections will have their eye on their prospects for the president's office six years from now. True, another parliamentary election is scheduled in 2010. Yet the not so remote likelihood of the presidency falling vacant before that date compounds the importance of November's parliamentary elections. Under the newly amended Article 76 any party hoping to field a candidate in the next presidential elections will have to have won five per cent -- i.e. 22 seats -- of the seats in the People's Assembly, a condition only the NDP currently meets. If the November elections are conducted in the same manner as in the past and produce a parliamentary balance similar to that which currently exists, only the NDP will be in a position to nominate a candidate in the next presidential elections. In such an event we will have effectively reverted to square one: a referendum on a single candidate. That disastrous prospect is one all political forces, including the NDP, must strive to avert. I do not think President Mubarak, whom I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate in advance for winning a fifth term, plans on running for a sixth. One of his foremost concerns is likely to be to ensure the safe and smooth transfer of power to whoever succeeds him, safeguarding the country's stability without sacrificing its dreams of reform. The only way to ensure such a safe transition is for the government to respond to people's aspirations to control their own affairs and future. If parliamentary elections are conducted in a manner that makes this possible they will mark the true beginning of a new and robust phase of political reform. The Egyptian people want free and fair parliamentary elections that offer equal opportunities to all. They want elections fully supervised, from beginning to end, by judges. The judges themselves realise, today more than ever, that their fight for an independent judiciary is a fight for all Egyptians. If this battle is lost the Egyptian people will never be able to win the war against tyranny and corruption, the foremost obstacles to political reform. The broad powers available to the president, and his competent wielding of these powers, should allay any fears we might have over stability even if the NDP loses its majority in the forthcoming parliament. What is important to the president, and to us all at this juncture, is that the next People's Assembly accurately reflects the balance between forces across Egypt's political spectrum. In doing so it will provide a foundation upon which we can build, for it will be an assembly that can legitimately assume the task of drafting a new national constitution. Should such a parliament come into being, President Mubarak's fifth term will form the vital transitional period to which we have all been looking forward. It will complete the process of democratisation and see a new system of government capable of halting the forces of despotism and corruption while simultaneously erecting a formidable barrier against those outside powers circling around Egypt and seeking the first opportunity to pounce. * The writer is professor of political science at Cairo University.
