On the 50th anniversary of the 23 July Revolution, the Arab Nasserist Democratic Party, which was founded to keep alive the legacy of one of the revolution's main architects, is in total disarray. Gamal Essam El-Din reports As the standard-bearer of the principles of the 1952 Revolution and its late leader Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the Arab Nasserist Democratic Party should be the political force most eager to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the revolution. But instead of taking the opportunity to step up its propagation activities, most of the party's activities seemed focused on keeping it together. To mark the revolution's anniversary, the Nasserist Party opened its third congress on Tuesday. The meeting was organised under Nasser's post-1967 war slogan: "What was captured by force must be restored by force". Diaaeddin Dawoud, the Nasserist Party's secretary- general, said, "President Nasser was very far-sighted when he adopted this slogan. It tells the Arabs that Israel only understands the language of force when it comes to withdrawing from occupied Arab land and making peace." The two-day congress was scheduled to include internal elections to choose the party's president, secretary-general, members of the party's politburo, central committee and general-secretariat. Dawoud was expected to be elected as chairman while Ahmed Hassan, the party's secretary for organisational affairs, was expected to win the post of party secretary-general. The party's senior officials had hoped to enliven celebrations with the presence of international political figures such as South Africa's former Presdient Nelson Mandela and Algeria's post- independence president Ahmed Ben Bella whom they had invited to the congress. Many veteran Nasserists, however, agree that the party congress and celebrations on 23 July will do little to hide the fact that the Nasserist Party is facing a serious crisis. The extent of the party's predicament was highlighted on 9 July when four university students raided party headquarters in downtown Cairo. The students, members of the Nasserist Party, called for the establishment of a committee made up of the various factions within the party to organise and supervise new party elections, describing the previous ones as "undemocratic". The four students, all of whom were under the age of 20, threatened to cause an explosion in the party's headquarters using a gas canister and Molotov cocktails in an attempt to force party leaders to respond to their demands. Since it was established in 1992, the Nasserist Party has suffered from internal divisions and major crises in its ranks. Topping the list of these crises is the conflict between the old guard and the younger generation. This conflict, which plagues all of the country's political parties including the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), is especially acute in the Nasserist Party. Among those comprising the Nasserist old guard are people who were arrested on 15 May 1971 by late President Anwar El-Sadat on charges of organising a coup. The most prominent of these are party Secretary-General Dawoud and Sami Sharaf, a minister of presidential affairs under Nasser and a leading member of the party's politburo. The new generation is led by MP Hamdin Sabahi. The clash between the two groups erupted on March 1996 after Dawoud had decided to ban Sabahi and four other young members from running in the party's internal elections. This led Sabahi to leave the party to form a new Nasserist party, which he called Al- Karama (Dignity). However, Sabahi's application was rejected by the Political Parties Committee and later by the Supreme Administrative Court last March, when he appealed the committee's decision. Dawoud and the Nasserist old guard accuse Sabahi of organising the assault on the party's headquarters. They claim that Al-Karama members, after having been denied official recognition, had decided to launch an attack on party premises. "It is an attack organised to gain control over the party and not, as the attackers allege, for democratising the party and modifying its institutions and ideology", Dawoud said. The party also suffered another defection when a group of its members obtained the approval of the Political Parties Committee in March 2002 for establishing a new party by the name of Wifaq (Consensus). The Wifaq Party is led by Ahmed Shuhayeb, a long-time politico who was among those arrested in May 1971. The younger generation complains that the Nasserist Party's performance has deteriorated at the hands of the old guard. Towards strengthening the party's role in political life, younger members called for the establishment of "a committee to unify all Nasserists in one party" in September 2000. The demand was supported by some old guard members such as former Ambassador Wafaa Hegazi who was entrusted with leading the committee. Foremost among the committee's recommendations was that internal elections be suspended until a non-partisan committee be formed to run party affairs for a transitional period of six months, at the end of which strictly supervised elections were to be conducted. This recommendation was rejected by party leaders, and internal elections were held shortly after, to the dismay of many Nasserists, including members of the old guard. Salah Se'da, a member of the party's politburo and one of the Free Officers, submitted his resignation in protest over the rigging of elections. Dawoud said it was impossible to adopt the Unifying Committee's recommendations "because I would never let the party's leadership slip out of my hands without a convincing reason. No party leadership would accept such recommendations, including the ruling party itself." The clash between the party's two wings also hit its three MPs in the People's Assembly. Last December, the Nasserist Party's two MPs, Hamdin Sabahi and Abdel- Azim El-Maghrabi, decided to freeze their membership in protest over the positions adopted by their third colleague Heidar Boghdadi. They charged that Boghdadi violated the party line by approving all of the government's laws and policy statements and urging some businessmen, such as Rami Lakah, to join the party in return for donations. In response, Boghdadi alleged that Sabahi and El-Maghrabi receive huge cash donations from Arab regimes (citing Iraq, Libya and Syria) in return for adopting positions favourable towards them in parliament. Boghdadi also accused the pair of leading the 9 July assault on the party's headquarters. Kamal Ahmed, an independent MP with Nasserist tendencies, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the Nasserist ideology has not lost its appeal. The assault, he said, was organised by young students calling for the reform of their party. "This is an indication that the Nasserist ideology is still gaining appeal among young people whose nationalist sentiments were stirred by the Israeli and American aggression against the Palestinians," he said. Ahmed, who developed the party's platform in 1992, attributed the disarray in opposition parties to the undemocratic practices of the ruling NDP. "The insistence of this party on monopolising political life has pushed opposition parties into internal power struggles over leadership roles when they should be promoting themselves among the masses." Ahmed left the Nasserist Party in 1993 in protest over internal divisions.
