The amendment of Article 76 of the constitution provokes uproar among opposition forces, reports Gamal Essam El-Din Following two and a half months of debate the People's Assembly on Tuesday voted for the amendment of Article 76 of the constitution allowing for the first ever multi-candidate presidential elections. National Democratic Party (NDP) officials rallied behind the amendment which will, claimed NDP Assistant Secretary-General Kamal El-Shazli, usher Egypt into a new era of political reform. The amendment will be followed by other reforms such as facilitating the formation of political parties, claimed El-Shazli, who also emphasised the presidential elections will be supervised by a committee comprising five senior judges and five public figures. "The People's Assembly and Shura Council will choose the public figures and make sure they are eminent, unbiased and non-partisan," he said. The following day opposition forces, infuriated by restrictions on candidacy contained in the amendment, announced they would intensify the battle for broad political reforms. The Muslim Brotherhood and Kifaya (Enough), the Egyptian Movement for Change, said yesterday they will organise more public protests and call for a boycott of the presidential elections and a public referendum, expected to be put to the vote by the end of this month. The amendment is expected to be presented to the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) within two weeks. "If they find constitutional defects it will then be sent back to parliament for re-drafting," said parliamentary speaker Fathi Sorour. As it stands, says the opposition, the amendment makes it impossible for independent candidates to run for election. Independent presidential candidates must obtain the backing of at least 250 elected members of the People's Assembly, Shura Council and municipal councils, an impossible task given all three bodies are stuffed with National Democratic Party (NDP) supporters. And while the only restriction opposition party candidates face in the forthcoming election is that up until Tuesday they were members of their party's politburo, in subsequent elections only candidates from parties which win five per cent of elected seats in the People's Assembly and Shura Council will be eligible. But since the current multi-party system was adopted in 1977, says Al-Wafd Party Spokesman Mounir Abdel-Nour, no opposition party has been able to win more than seven seats in parliament given the NDP's ruthless, state- supported monopoly of political life. Opposition forces united in rejecting the restrictions, saying they drained President Mubarak's 26 February call for the amendment of any meaning. The amendment, says Muslim Brotherhood MP Hussein Ibrahim, takes political reform back to square one, cloaking what is in fact a presidential referendum like any other in the garb of an election. Muslim Brotherhood MPs, joining forces with opposition figures such as the leader of Al-Ghad (Tomorrow) Party Ayman Nour, and independents including Hamdeen Sabahi, Adel Eid and Abdel-Azim El-Maghrabi, mounted a ferocious attack against the amendment with Nour and Brotherhood MPs walking out of the assembly meeting in protest against the NDP's manipulation of the terms of candidacy. Thirty-four opposition and independent MPs opposed the amendment. In a surprise move, Nasserist Party MP Heider Boghdadi expressed approval, only to be dismissed from his party's ranks half an hour after stating his position. Initial hopes that President Mubarak's call to allow multi-candidate presidential elections would foster a consensus on political reform and move it forward have now been shattered, and the amendment is widely expected to further polarise the political scene. Kifaya Coordinator George Ishak believes the "amendment is a bad move" that will only boost his "movement's popularity and enhance its strategy". And that strategy, says Ishak, will remain one of confrontation based on street protests and on mobilising people against an extension of power on the part of President Mubarak. Kifaya, he said, now plans to organise a campaign of civil disobedience. "It is a form of rejection that will be used to mobilise people in favour of boycotting next September's one-man-show presidential elections." Kifaya plans to coordinate its boycott strategy with other political forces. Muslim Brotherhood MP Mohamed Mursi told the Weekly that the group will organise more street protests in support of a boycott of both the referendum needed to approve the constitutional amendment and of the presidential elections even if that means more of its members being detained by security forces. Opposition MPs also claim that holding the presidential election in a single day will leave it open to vote rigging given that there are too few judges to supervise 35,000 polling stations. Independent MP Hamdeen Sabahi told the Weekly the amendment is likely to open, rather than close, the door to greater US pressure on Egypt to accept international monitoring of both presidential and parliamentary elections. During Tuesday's debate NDP MPs defended the amendment on the grounds that, according to one, it was drafted to obstruct those "who receive dollars from intelligence agencies from becoming presidents of Egypt". US President George Bush's statement in Latvia this week that there should be international monitoring of presidential elections in Egypt was strongly denounced by NDP MPs and some opposition deputies. Chairman of the Shura Council and NDP Secretary-General Safwat El-Sherif said on Sunday that "international monitoring is totally rejected, irrespective of who asks for it." Quite how that is going to go down during Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif's visit to America, scheduled next week, is unclear. Nazif told the Washington Times that "Egypt's timetable for transforming itself from single-party rule to a multi-party democracy has been communicated to the Bush administration in more ways than one." "We are getting excellent, positive responses from the administration, encouraging us and saying to us you are doing a good job, both on the economic and on the political side," Nazif told the Washington Times. Whether or not that will be enough to prevent the kind of negative reception accorded to Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit last February -- his visit came in the wake of the arrest of MP Ayman Nour -- is not yet clear. According to acting US State Department Spokesman Tom Casey US officials "are still studying the constitutional amendment adopted by parliament that ends a system that allowed President Hosni Mubarak to run unopposed for four six-year terms."
