Next week's mid-term Shura Council elections will pit official NDP candidates against other NDPers running independently after the ruling party declined to nominate them. Gamal Essam El-Din reports Some eight million voters are supposed to head to the polls next week to elect their Shura Council representatives. Four hundred seventy one candidates are striving to become members of this consultative upper house without legislative powers, compared with the 851 candidates who ran in 2001. This time, 88 seats in 67 constituencies need to be filled. The elections will be held in three stages between 23 May and 19 June. The first stage, set for Sunday, will involve 170 candidates vying for 32 seats in eight governorates (Giza, Qalyoubeya, Menoufeya, Beheira, Fayoum, Beni Suef, Qena and North Sinai), with run-offs scheduled for 29 May. The ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) is fielding 35 of these candidates. In compliance with a ruling handed down by the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) in 2000, the elections will take place with full judiciary supervision, with 6,640 individuals supervising 5,337 polling stations. Interior Minister Habib El-Adli has said that the number of voters at each polling station will not exceed 1,500. The elections will primarily pit candidates officially fielded by the NDP against NDPers running independently after failing to secure the party's nomination. They are doing so despite the party threatening to kick them out for declaring themselves independents. Opposition parties, meanwhile, regard the arrangement as highly undemocratic. They cite the fact that with 135 "NDP independents" running in the first stage alone, each official NDP candidate will be competing against four or so "NDP independents". This dynamic has also traditionally resulted in low voter turnout (less than 15 per cent), and a wide-scale boycotting of the elections by the opposition. As a result, the NDP has traditionally dominated the council. In 1995, NDPers won 88 of the 90 seats being contested, or 97.7 per cent. In June 1998, NDP candidates took all seats. The same scenario was repeated in June 2001 as the NDP swept every one of the 88 seats being contested. NDP candidates -- such as Mustafa Kamal Helmi, the council's incumbent chairman -- often win their seats completely unopposed. Many of the NDP's 35 Shura candidates are businessmen. One, construction magnate Hisham Talaat Mustafa, is running unopposed in Alexandria's Sidi Gaber district. Mustafa's father is a former MP; his brother Tareq is a current MP. The council already includes around 35 business tycoons. Convinced that the council will always be dominated by the NDP, only five or so opposition candidates will be running in the first stage. The liberal- oriented Wafd Party's leaders see the Shura Council as a place where loyalty to the regime is rewarded with prestigious, but ineffectual, posts. According to Amr Hashem Rabie, a researcher with Al-Ahram's Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, the Shura Council's role must be completely reconsidered. "This council must either be transformed into something like the American Senate or the pre-1952 Egyptian Senate, or else put to rest altogether." Rabie said two strong legislative houses would better serve Egyptian democracy, by "helping the legislative process, and exercising better control over the executive". Currently, he said, the council serves an ambiguous role that ends up costing the state budget LE60 million a year. The People's Assembly, meanwhile, is widely seen as a toothless body as well. Businessmen are increasingly interested in becoming council members, Rabie said, because of the benefits the parliamentary immunity membership bestows. Although the Wafd, Nasserist and Tagammu parties have all decided to boycott the elections, they are allowing members to run as long as they bear the costs of their campaigning on their own. Because Shura constituencies are three times the size of those for the People's Assembly, opposition parties said they preferred to reserve their limited financial resources for the lower house elections, which are slated for October 2005. The outlawed Muslim Brotherhood organisation has also decided to boycott the elections, even though one of its veteran members, Khaled El-Zaafarani, will run for Alexandria's Montazah district seat in the third stage. Sixty leading brotherhood members -- including several former MPs -- were recently arrested, in what has become a standard government tactic on the eve of elections for both the Shura Council and the People's Assembly. The second stage will begin on 3 June, with candidates running for 26 seats in eight additional governorates (Sharqeya, Daqahleya, Damietta, Gharbeya, Suez, Sohag, South Sinai and the Red Sea), and run-offs scheduled for 9 June. The third stage will take place on 13 June, with candidates running for 30 seats in the remaining eight governorates (Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said, Kafr El-Sheikh, Minya, Assiut, Aswan and Marsa Matruh). Run-offs will be held on 19 June. The election process will wrap up with President Mubarak appointing 44 members to the new council.
