The divisions inside the Nasserist Party reached the point of explosion -- literally. Soha Abdelaty reports Click to view caption Downtown Cairo was taken by surprise on Tuesday morning when a small group of men took their dissatisfaction with the Nasserist Party to the streets. That morning, four young men raided the party's headquarters and occupied it for a few hours, in a show of opposition to the way the party has been run in recent years. Ahmed Kamal, a Nasserite in his early 20s, stood on the first-floor balcony of the party's headquarters and threatened to cause an explosion in the bustling downtown thoroughfare of Talaat Harb Street using a canister of gas for cooking and a few Molotov cocktails. Witnesses said Kamal threw at least one small bomb which immediately exploded on the street. No one was injured. Scores of anti-riot police had closed off the street soon after the incident broke out at around 9.30am. The stand-off ended just past noon, when the police entered the headquarters and took away the protesters. "[Kamal] was screaming incomprehensible things," a young saleswoman in the shop across the street told Al-Ahram Weekly. "At one point, he was saying: 'I want to blow up the whole world', pacing about the balcony and frantically speaking to someone on his mobile," she added. The three other men -- one of whom had his face covered -- remained inside for much of the stand-off, said the eyewitness. "They were from the party itself, claiming that its recent internal elections had been rigged and demanded a re-election," a police officer at the scene said. But at a news conference held hours after the stand-off was resolved, Nasserist Party Chairman Diaeddin Dawoud shrugged off the incident as an attempt to "cause chaos", and characterised it as "political thuggery". He insinuated that the four men were not the only ones involved in the incident, saying, "There is evidence pointing towards certain parties, but we will not accuse them publicly until an investigation is completed." Hamed Mahmoud, a member of the party's politburo, also vehemently denied that the four belonged to the party. He told the Weekly that he had only seen Kamal occasionally at the party's headquarters, and that he had never seen the other three men prior to the incident. Mahmoud confirmed, however, that the four men were indeed asking for re-elections -- "a demand the party was willing to listen to", he added. Observers note that the Nasserist Party has been wracked by internal divisions since it was established in 1992. The party was established to propagate the ideology of the late President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, "Nasserism" -- an amalgamation of ideas and stances including socialism, Arab unity, non-alignment, anti- imperialism and anti-Zionism. Amin Iskander, a former member of the party, said that he was not surprised by the incident. "The situation was ultimately going to erupt", Iskander said, adding that the differences between the party leadership and the rank and file had recently become so great as to paralyse the party altogether. He cited the party's lack of participation in the recent popular demonstrations against Israeli aggression in Palestine as just one example of the organisation's stagnation. Many of the party's founding members, like himself, have left the organisation because of their dissatisfaction with the way the leadership is running it. But differences amongst leaders, allegations of rigging elections, the lack of a long- term vision and strategy are all on the list of the challenges faced by most of Egypt's political parties. "There are problems in the rules that govern the party system in Egypt," Diaa Rashwan of the Al- Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies told the Weekly. What happened on Tuesday at the Nasserist Party has happened many times before to other parties, Rashwan said, explaining that differences amongst party members have often given rise to violent incidents. "This is part of a crisis in party life that brings in everyone," Rashwan said. "There is no mechanism to settle disputes within or among parties." Iskandar offered a similar analysis, "Since these parties were established, there has been no internal transfer of power." He also suggested that there are many restrictions fettering democracy in Egypt. Rashwan concluded that the incident is unlikely to have a detrimental effect on the Nasserist Party's standing among other parties, saying, "It will only enhance its existing internal divisions."
