The NDP puts political and economic reform atop its first annual conference agenda. Gamal Essam El-Din reports Safwat El-Sherif The ruling National Democratic Party is wrapping up the preparations for its first annual conference, set to take place from 26-28 September. Before visiting Italy and France at the end of this week, President Hosni Mubarak is expected to have gone over the conference's full agenda. Mubarak, in his capacity as NDP chairman, will meet with NDP senior officials and Prime Minister Atef Ebeid to determine the conference's priorities, said NDP Secretary-General Safwat El-Sherif. Economic and political issues will top the list, El-Sherif said, as will "other important issues like fighting unemployment, upgrading education, improving health and birth control services and encouraging women to play a more active role in political life". To coordinate with the government on these issues, the NDP's six-member steering committee -- the party's most influential body -- met with Prime Minister Atef Ebeid on Sunday. El-Sherif said the meeting was marked by agreement between the government and the NDP on the necessity of political and economic reform. These two issues, he added, were also discussed extensively by the party's Higher Policies Council, which is headed by Gamal Mubarak, the 39-year-old son of President Hosni Mubarak and chairman of the NDP's influential Policy Secretariat. El-Sherif said efforts towards political reform would focus on upgrading political legislation rather than amending the 32-year- old constitution. "The NDP's insistence that it is still premature to amend the constitution does not indicate that the door is closed to political reform," El-Sherif said. "We will give special attention to upgrading legislation which will help move the process of political reform forward." According to El-Sherif, the drafting of a new electoral law tops the reform agenda. "Both the government and the NDP are currently involved in putting together two bills on the national electoral system. Once prepared, the two bills will be open to public debate by all political forces so they can agree on the most viable one," he said. Opposition figures interviewed by Al-Ahram Weekly continued to express dissatisfaction with the scale of the suggested reforms, especially in light of the profound transformations that have been sweeping the Arab world in the aftermath of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Hussein Abdel-Razeq, chairman of the leftist Tagammu Party's Political Secretariat, said El- Sherif's statements show that the NDP remains opposed to any kind of genuine political reform. "The reforms being promised are very patchy, poorly thought out and badly implemented," Abdel- Razeq said. There is a general consensus among political forces of all stripes, he said, that fundamental political reforms must include amending the constitution to create a more accountable government, repealing a string of infamous and repressive laws with the emergency law at their head, and preventing security forces from manipulating elections in favour of the ruling party. Abdel-Razeq also said the new electoral law would only gain opposition acceptance if it showed, in clear- cut terms, that the voting process is completely supervised -- from A to Z -- by a supreme judicial authority. "Four years ago," Abdel-Razeq said, "opposition parties presented parliament with an electoral bill which aimed at emulating India's election system, which entrusts an independent judicial authority, rather than the Interior Ministry, with supervising elections. The bill was rejected because it was destined to prevent the NDP from maintaining its 25-year-old monopoly on political life." Another prominent opposition figure, liberal Wafd Party Chairman No'man Gomaa, recently urged President Mubarak to dissolve the People's Assembly as a necessary step towards genuine political reform. "Once dissolved, the Assembly would be replaced by a 200-member national committee to be entrusted with drafting a new constitution, preparing a new electoral law, repealing infamous laws and improving economic performance," Gomaa said. El-Sherif defended the NDP, saying the party was keen on encouraging political life to flourish. For now, however, the economy was perhaps of greater concern. And since the NDP is both "democratic and populist", as El-Sherif said, "we are a party that is concerned with meeting the basic requirements of all the Egyptian people." The upcoming conference, El- Sherif said, would make clear the NDP's commitment to ensuring that "limited-income citizens -- who have suffered from the scourge of this recession -- will be able to easily obtain their basic food and medical needs at affordable prices." The economy has been the sorest point brought up by opposition blocs, which have been calling for change in an increasingly vocal manner. Leftist-leaning Al-Ahali (mouthpiece of the Tagammu Party) summed up these sentiments with its headline last week that said, "Ebeid must resign or be forced to resign." Ihab Elwi, the chairman of the Central Agency for General Mobilisation and Statistics, meanwhile, recently announced that as a result of the floatation of the Egyptian pound, the prices of basic foodstuffs have gone up by 40 per cent since January. "This means," Elwi said, "that at least 6.8 million government and public sector employees have lost half the value of their salaries and are now unable to meet their basic needs." In light of this significant top- level government admission, NDP insiders are speculating that the announcement made by El-Sherif -- that the conference would bring happy news -- may concern an agreement with the government on a significant across the board increase in the salaries of government employees.
