The nation's three biggest opposition parties have decided not to nominate candidates for president. Mona El-Nahhas asks whether that will have any effect on the race The leftist Tagammu Party, the liberal Wafd Party and the Arab Democratic Nasserist Party -- Egypt's three biggest opposition parties -- have decided not to field candidates in September's presidential elections, the first multi-candidate contest in the country's history. The Tagammu have decided to boycott the vote as well, while the Nasserist party will make its final decision on that next Thursday. An announcement on this same point will also soon be made by the Wafd party. The three parties decided to boycott the nomination process because "we are not willing to play the role of extras in such an electoral farce," said Tagammu Party Secretary-General Hussein Abdel-Razeq. The results of the contest are already known, Abdel-Razeq said, and heavily tipped in the ruling National Democratic Party's favour. "With the media dominated by the state," he said, "none of the opposition nominees will get the chance to really show the public what they stand for." The time factor -- with the campaign only taking place over three weeks -- also weighs heavily on the opposition's ability to conduct a successful campaign. Wafd Party Secretary-General El-Sayed Badawi said the parties made their decisions after canvassing party officials in different governorates. The Wafd, at least, seems to have gone back on a decision to nominate its chairman, Noman Gomaa. The Tagammu, as well, had said that the party's historical leader Khaled Mohieddin was going to run. Officials from all three parties cited the overall political climate as the overriding factor in their decisions not to field candidates. "The limitations posed by the amendment of Article 76 of the constitution, combined with the restrictive nature of the recent laws passed by parliament, obliterated our hopes that a real change might be taking place," Abdel-Razeq said. Ayman Nour, chairman of the liberal Ghad Party, said he was still planning to run. Nour, however, is mired in a forgery trial that has been temporarily postponed until 25 September. According to legal experts, the trial will not stop Nour from running; that would only occur if he were convicted. Nour recently asked opposition parties to back a single nominee who would represent them all. He said that nominee should be chosen by 40 veteran political figures. The suggestion was turned down. "It lacked logic," Abdel-Razeq said, "for it would be very hard for parties with different ideologies and agendas to name a single nominee representing them all." Nour's platform centres on the idea that if elected, he would serve for a two-year transitional period, during which a new constitution will be drafted and all exceptional laws -- like the state of emergency that has been in effect since 1981 -- lifted. In an attempt to garner support, Nour met his long- time rival, the Wafd's Gomaa, at a Zamalek restaurant last week. Nour left the Wafd Party in 2001 after a major feud with Gomaa. Although the meeting seemed to have melted the ice a bit, it did not go far in ensuring any sort of coordination between the two parties. Two smaller parties -- the Democratic Generation Party and the Green Party -- also decided not to field candidates, for much the same reasons cited by the three major ones. Democratic Generation Party Chairman Nagui El-Shehabi also told Al-Ahram Weekly that the party was saving its energy to support the 50 nominees it intended to field in this fall's parliamentary elections. The Liberal Party, meanwhile, was in a quagmire of a different sort. While MP Talaat El-Sadat -- late President Anwar El-Sadat's nephew -- has already announced his intention to run as the party's nominee, party chairman Helmi Salem is arguing that El-Sadat has no legal right to represent the party, since his membership was stripped last December. Salem also made an announcement this week that he will run as the party's sole legitimate nominee. The Salem-Sadat struggle, typical of a party that has been mired in internal disputes for seven years -- will probably by settled by the newly-formed Presidential Elections Committee. Seven other minor parties with meagre grassroots support are fielding candidates of their own. The Umma Party, the Misr Al-Arabi Al-Ishtiraki Party, the Takaful Party, the Misr 2000 Party, the Free Social Constitutional Party, the National Accordance Party, and the Al-Ittihad Al-Demoqrati Party all see the elections as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make a splash of any sort. After all, this year's race will be the only one where parties are not required to already have a certain number of MPs (five per cent) before being allowed to field a candidate. That stipulation will only come into effect with the presidential elections of 2011. Observers are also speculating that these small parties are anxious to take advantage of the government's promise to provide LE500,000 in campaign financial aid to each party's nominee. Three other parties -- the Social Justice Party, the New Misr Al-Fatah Party and the Al-Sha'b Al-Demoqrati Party -- are mired in internal power struggles which have not allowed them to nominate candidates. Egypt's Youth Party and the Social Peace Party -- both of which came into existence after the 30 May deadline set by Article 76 -- won't be running either, nor will the Islamist-oriented Labour Party, which has been frozen since a May 2000 Political Parties Committee decree.
