Gamal Mubarak and the NDP's young reformists seem to have shifted the balance of power within the ruling party. Gamal Essam El-Din reports Most political pundits agreed that Gamal Mubarak, the 39-year-old son of President Hosni Mubarak, was the key figure in the ruling National Democratic Party's (NDP) first annual conference, which took place from 26- 28 September. Held under the slogan "A New Way of Thinking and Rights of Citizens First", the conference featured intense debates about the party's strategies for improving the living conditions of limited-income classes and boosting popular participation in political life. As chairman of the party's influential Policy Secretariat, the younger Mubarak spearheaded a package of political reforms that made him the conference's beating heart and mind. Mubarak was the main speaker at the conference's general sessions, during which the NDP's platform was crystallised, and its new batch of proposed reforms were unveiled and discussed. The conference, pundits argued, represented a victory for Mubarak and his secretariat's dynamic shift away from the more traditional attitudes of the party's old guard heavyweights. That shift began during the party's eighth congress in September 2002, when Mubarak first tilted the party's balance of power towards its younger members and their attempts at innovative reforms. It also represented a major leap in the younger Mubarak's political prestige. On the conference's first day, Mubarak made clear that the NDP was a party that adheres to the centrist ideology. "This means that the NDP stands for moderation, openness and freedom, and fights extremism, isolation and coercion," he said. For his part, NDP Secretary- General Safwat El-Sherif said the party firmly believes in free enterprise, market economy, trade liberalisation and the reinforcement of private sector and civil society roles in development. According to Mubarak, this did not mean, however, that the state's role was moot. "The state will still be required to play a very limited role," he said, "of protecting poor citizens and consumers from the vagaries of the market economy." El-Sherif, speaking in a less pragmatic manner, described the party as being "populist", with the goal of ensuring that citizens' dreams come true. The only way that could really occur, according to Mubarak, was for "the relationship between citizens and the state to be based on a new social contract". Mubarak said this contract affirmed that the state must make sure that citizens benefit from political and socio- economic rights before it asks them to play their proper roles and take on their true responsibilities for boosting development. "It is a new kind of positive partnership," Mubarak said, "and that is why we chose 'A New Way of Thinking and Rights of Citizens First' as the conference's slogan." In his address to the conference on 28 September, President Mubarak wholeheartedly ratified this agenda. "We firmly believe that citizens get their rights first in order to ensure that they perform their obligations. Citizens must be full partners in the process of decision-making," the president said. The younger Mubarak outlined the rights citizens must have. Part of the party's initiative in this respect involves opening up a wide- scale dialogue on political reform and deepening democratisation within the ranks of civil society. Mubarak emphasised the principle of equal rights, with no discrimination on the basis of religion, sex or doctrine. To achieve this objective, Mubarak said, four goals must be fulfiled: activating the role of civil society associations; amending a host of political legislations (primarily 1956's Political Rights Law and 1977's Political Parties Law); upgrading the judicial system; and modernising Egypt's cultural infrastructure. El-Sherif said another aspect of the party's new way of thinking involved its belief that the NDP need not monoplise the nation's politics. "We do not claim the NDP has ready-made solutions to the nation's difficult problems, but we claim it has a clear approach on how to address these problems," El-Sherif said. Hussein Abdel-Razeq, chairman of the leftist Tagammu Party, told Al-Ahram Weekly that, "it is good that after 25 years, the NDP has at last realised that it must not monopolise political life. We hope it will not take another 25 years to turn this tardy realisation into a reality." What surprised Abdel-Razeq was the fact that the party's old guard had so willingly accepted these ideas, whereas they had always been so adamantly against them in the past. In fact, Gamal Mubarak led the debates regarding citizens' rights, in the presence of the ministers of information, parliamentary affairs, interior, and justice, as well as the speaker of the People's Assembly. Mubarak was also the key figure when it came to defining the party's relationship with the government. Thanking Prime Minister Atef Ebeid for closely cooperating with the NDP over the past year, Mubarak said, "this has really helped us produce a package of effective policies." He added, however, that both the government and the NDP should not merely depend on short- term solutions, provide rosy promises or adopt old-fashioned means of dealing with today's problems. "These problems require radical solutions rather than merely leaving them for subsequent generations to deal with," Mubarak said. Addressing the conference on 28 September, Ebeid thanked Gamal Mubarak "for his honest attempts to serve the nation, devoting hundreds of hours of his time to urge Egyptians to come up with an agenda on the nation's present and future challenges. His honesty and sincere efforts were the driving force behind all the reports presented to this conference," Ebeid said. On 27 September, Mahmoud Mohieddin, chairman of the conference's economic trends committee, said the government must also garner President Mubarak's support for its plans. As for the oft- repeated mantra about the "the government [being] the party's government, and not vice versa," Mohieddin said the most important thing was the way the party's plans were being implemented by the government. The controversial decision to float the Egyptian pound was jointly agreed by to the government and the NDP, he said, "but its implementation led to stringent criticism and deep suspicions". NDP insiders told Al-Ahram Weekly that there was a general feeling during the conference that the only way Ebeid's government would remain in office was by stabilising the foreign exchange market. "The government will be out of office if this market remains out of control," an NDP insider said. In terms of the NDP's foreign policies, a report prepared by the policy secretariat emphasised that Egypt must "rationalise its relations with the Arab world. This means that Egypt's supreme interests are paramount and must be above any considerations." In contrast, the report emphasised that Egypt must maintain a strategic relationship with America. "There is major recognition in both countries that they are very important to each other," the report said. Addressing the American Chamber of Commerce on 22 September, Gamal Mubarak said Egyptian-American relations had reached an advanced stage of maturity. Mubarak, who visited America twice this year, said signing a free trade agreement (FTA) between Egypt and American is now closer than before. "This agreement favours both countries as well as the entire region," he said.
