NDP attempts at reform will fall at the first hurdle until the party sheds the legacy of its past, writes Amr Elchoubaki* For the second year running the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) talked a great deal about reform and did very little. The emergency law is still with us. Political life is going nowhere. Legally recognised parties, including the NDP, continue to inhabit their own bubbles. Reform has so far focussed on amendments to the parties, political rights and People's Assembly laws. But political life will not be revived by the simple expedient of adding new people to the Parties Committee when what is actually needed is to end bureaucratic interference in the creation of new parties. A mechanism must be created capable of ensuring that political life becomes more responsive to the needs and initiatives of the public. That will not be achieved when the country's political energy is spent on endless pleas to the Parties Committee and a concomitant barrage of court cases. But why is the NDP unable to translate all the noise it makes about reform into any kind of action? The answer to this question lies in the very nature of a party that has monopolised the political scene since being formed in July 1978, that overlaps endlessly with the state apparatus and that is managed more like a political department than a party. The NDP mirrors Egypt's entire political and non-political spectrum, often in comic ways. It was formed by President Anwar El-Sadat, who selected an interim committee of 200 people to launch the new party. Immediately 275 People's Assembly members joined, including a majority of the then ruling, Egypt Party, formed by Sadat in 1976, along with three Liberals and eight Wafdists. Since then the NDP has operated as a typical state-run party. It has never engaged in any form of political struggle, nor has it spent any time in opposition. The ruling party has always been subject to an inbuilt crisis. Whenever governments set up parties, whenever a party is associated with the president, whenever the state bureaucracy overlaps with party cadres, people are bound to want a piece of the action, and not always for political reasons. NDP members are not selected according to rigorous political criteria. Those who rose within the NDP were either academics or high-ranking state officials. The NDP is not known for its exercise of oversight towards the government. Even the Policies Committee, which has selected some ministers, remains a fragile entity, one formed from above and suffering, as a consequence, from all the ailments that afflict the party as a whole. Some people believe that the Policies Committee is less eager to engage in overt political work than to carry out covert arrangements according to a hidden agenda. Over the past two decades the NDP has resembled a state agency. It recruits people from across the bureaucratic spectrum and as a result attracts immense numbers of self-serving individuals. And on the eve of its second conference, if the party resembled anything it was a massive clearing house for personal favours. Reform and the much trailed "new thinking" came from above, as if by presidential edict. Leaders with no political expertise or imagination passed these ideas to their underlings. And suddenly party functionaries discovered that they had political as well as administrative tasks. The minor changes introduced over the past two years by the NDP haven't done much to alter the country's political scene. The NDP hasn't changed the nature of the political system. It hasn't reversed widespread stagnation and institutional corruption. Reform remains a cosmetic matter: it is window dressing, with no impact on reality. Substantive political reform relates to social interaction and requires the creation of a political environment that allows for the emergence of people who believe in reform and who can do things differently. Reform cannot be conducted by an entourage of appointees who have little to commend them beyond bureaucratic careers and hefty bank balances. The NDP is mired in its with the state. It is bursting with functionaries more eager to profit from office than to serve. NDP membership is large but ineffective. Doctrinal differences among its members are at best murky. The NDP may think of itself as a centrist party, but it cannot conceive of currents to either its right or left. Its centrism is beyond political classification. It is a negation of politics. Egypt needs to revive the values and rules of political competition. We need to end stagnation and indifference. We need to encourage rotation within the elite and within the system, something that would be far more useful than creating a host of ineffective parties. But for this to happen the NDP needs to apply the rules of competition within its own ranks. It needs to cast off its ossified, over- blown past. The introduction of open competition within NDP ranks would be the first step in reforming the party and the country's political scene. The government party has to transform itself into a real party that commands the support of a real public, something that might happen were the monolith divided. Certainly, the NDP has enough members occupying the centre, or right of centre, to be split into two distinct parties. The separation of the NDP into two parties, each with a consistent doctrinal approach, would go a long way to rejuvenating the political scene. A change of this magnitude would allow the ruling party to engage in effective institutional and party politics. The parties that emerge would have distinct discourses around which like-minded people could meaningfully rally. At present the NDP is stuck with a discourse that, while trying to please, is too murky to succeed in doing so. Two parties would be able to assess the doctrinal and political attitudes of their members and engage effectively in collective and institutional work while the opposition parties would then be able to position themselves accordingly. As things stand opposition parties are often seen as extra-legal entities, disposable appendices to political life. Egypt must transcend the perennial opposition demands for political reform and more parties. Let's go back to basics. Let's start by having policies and politicians, parties and partisans. * The writer is an analyst at the Al-Ahram Political and Strategic Studies Centre.
