The police stood by while Cairo witnessed its most contentious protest demonstration in a great many years, reports Gamal Essam El-Din With hundreds of central security forces and dozens of anti-riot trucks in place, the area in front of downtown's High Court building had the typical look of a demonstration about to happen. By midday on Sunday, around 500 activists from the Kifaya (Enough) movement had begun their public protest against the prospect of President Hosni Mubarak running for another term in office. A presidential referendum is scheduled for the end of September or early October 2005. Expectations are that Mubarak will run and win, thus extending his 23-year-old rule for another six years. At Sunday's protest, demonstrators chanted slogans like "Enough for Mubarak", and "No to hereditary rule". Most of the protesters also had their mouths covered with stickers that simply said, "Enough". According to Abdel-Halim Qandil, the executive editor of the Nasserist Al-Arabi newspaper, and spokesman for the Enough movement (also known as the Popular Campaign for Change), Sunday's protest was an immediate reaction to an 8 December National Democratic Party announcement that its 2005 presidential and parliamentary election campaign will begin in a few weeks. NDP Secretary-General Safwat El-Sherif had said that party members in 26 governorates would be mobilised to stage public rallies aimed at both electing new party ranks and preparing for the 2005 polls. If Sunday's protest was any indication, the ruling party's campaign looks to be vastly different from last time, when protests were few and far between. Although the NDP has, thus far, declined to name its candidate for the 2005 presidential referendum, it seems clear that Mubarak will be the nominee. The delay in officially naming Mubarak, observers said, was a significant development considering that the party used to always re-nominate the president and begin working on his campaign at least a year ahead of time. Al- Ahram political analyst Mohamed El-Sayed Said, a member of the Enough movement, cited both domestic and foreign pressure, especially from an impatient America bullying its Arab allies to democratise, as an explanation for the NDP's delay. Other observers argued that Sunday's unprecedented protest was a sign that the government was widening the scope of freedom and tolerance being allowed to the general public. As such, the protest made both Mubarak and the ruling party look good. An informed NDP source told Al-Ahram Weekly that the party would name Mubarak as its candidate next April, or before parliament adjourns next June. According to Gamal Mubarak, the 41- year-old son of President Mubarak and chairman of the NDP's influential Policies Committee, the constitution authorises President Mubarak to run for a fifth term. This means, if elected, President Mubarak would remain in power until the year 2011. The opposition wants the constitution amended before the 2005 referendum so that the president may be elected for only two terms. That and other gaps between the NDP and the opposition over key constitutional amendments provide the main catalyst for campaigns like Enough. An opposition alliance including eight official political parties also sprang up last summer to lobby for amending the 33-year-old constitution. This bloc said last week that it was able to compel the NDP to accept its agenda to discuss constitutional reform during a national dialogue that is due to be held next month. The opposition bloc objects to Mubarak running for a new six-year term, but they would not object to his re-nominating himself as long as he agrees to a direct competition with other candidates, rather than a yes-or-no referendum. Enough and other unofficial opposition blocs, meanwhile, reject the idea of Mubarak remaining in power any longer. According to Qandil, using the word "enough" is a symbolic way of touching base with the general public. "Our movement targets these ordinary Egyptians. We want them to relinquish their fear and lobby strongly for their political and economic rights." The idea behind the movement is that Egypt, under Mubarak, has reached a stage of severe political stagnation, economic ineptitude, and social disintegration. While Said gave Mubarak credit for renewing Egypt's infrastructure and keeping the country out of the various military conflicts that have consumed the region, he said the next phase needed new leadership capable of turning Egypt into a truly democratic and liberal state. "President Mubarak sticks to the belief that gradualism must be the hallmark of switching to full democracy, but this can no longer be accepted because Egypt will no longer tolerate being bogged down into years of stagnation under the guise of political stability," Said said. Qandil told the Weekly that the Enough movement has several novel strategies "to become a thorn in the side of Mubarak's re-election for a fifth term". First of all, Qandil said, the movement intends to approach a group of prominent public figures and call upon them to nominate themselves against the president. Although officially running against Mubarak is almost impossible, Qandil said the nominations would be symbolic. "The symbolic nomination in itself will nevertheless be a highly powerful tool aimed at both breaking the taboo imposed on the presidential referendum, and embarrassing the NDP at the same time, especially in front of foreign powers like the US." According to article 76 of the constitution, the nomination for the post of President of the Republic must be made in the People's Assembly upon the proposal of at least one third of its members; the candidate who wins two thirds of the Assembly's votes is then presented to the public for a yes-or-no referendum vote. According to Qandil, the list of prominent national figures the Enough movement plans to approach to run for the presidency post includes renowned veteran journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, prestigious historian and former judge Tareq El-Bishri, former prime minister Aziz Sedqi, and former judge Yehia El-Rifai. "If some would argue that these figures are as old as Mubarak, I say we have another list of young candidates whom I will disclose later," Qandil said. He said sociologist Saadeddin Ibrahim, novelist Nawal El-Saadawi and former MP Mohamed Farid Hassanein, all of whom have already indicated their willingness to run for president, had every right to do so, but the Enough movement would not support them because they lacked a national constituency. Qandil also said the movement would appeal to international agencies to monitor both the referendum and the parliamentary election. If, in the end, Mubarak was elected, the movement would file a court case aiming to disqualify the vote. "The Court of Cassation said the memberships of at least 200 People's Assembly deputies was illegal, and this is enough to render Mubarak's re- election illegal," Qandil said. Mohamed Moussa, chairman of parliament's legislative committee, said that disqualifying the presidential election was impossible because even though the constitution gives the Cassation Court the right to issue reports on parliamentary membership, it also gives the Assembly the final say. The Enough movement was formed on the eve of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, and evolved from an anti-war movement into an unofficial group calling for an end to Mubarak's rule. It is now an umbrella group of 26 human rights and civil society organisations that includes strange bedfellows and disparate opposition groups like the Islamists, communists, Nasserists, and others. The movement's rapporteur, George Ishaq, is a Coptic Christian. It claims that 1,500 people have signed its petition for broad constitutional reform. The movement said it did not seek a licence from the Interior Ministry to hold last week's protest. "This is one of our new and different tactics," Qandil said, "because we believe democracy comes by acquisition, struggle and direct confrontation, rather than by appealing to the regime." This, however, seems to beg the question of why the security forces, which overwhelmingly outnumbered the protesters, allowed this particular demonstration to take place, while they could have easily prevented it, as they have shown on many similar occasions in the past.
