A new leftist party is unlikely to gain the popularity it seeks due to deep divisions on political, economic and social policies, reports Khaled Dawoud The Socialist Popular Alliance (SPA), one of the scores of new political parties coming into existence following the fall of the Mubarak regime, held its opening conference in Cairo last Friday amid deep divisions among its members on the new party's political, economic and social policies. The third draft of the SPA's programme, circulated to members who attended the conference at the Press Syndicate, adopted what several members described as the kind of hardline communist ideology that has long been given up by other leftist parties in the region and in the world as a whole. The programme calls for a central role to be given to the state in setting development strategies in nearly all aspects of the economy, the halting of the privatisation policies of the former regime, the confiscation of the assets of former ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) leaders and the promotion of the "collective ownership of the economy". The programme declared that the SPA "rejects policies of liberalising markets and trade and globalisation led by huge capitalist corporations, and calls for the establishment of an independent national economy away from the control of the colonialist powers and international monopolies." Adel El-Mashad, one of the party's founding members, called upon the leadership to review its economic platform, saying that supporting communist ideas such as the nationalisation of private- sector companies and failing to include the promotion of the private sector "can only isolate us further in society and keep us in the same place we've been in over the past few decades." Other party members noted that calling for the nationalisation of private- sector companies active in important sectors of the economy such as oil, mining and construction was likely to discourage average Egyptian voters from joining the party or voting for it in the upcoming parliamentary elections in September. The majority of SPA members had earlier belonged to the leftist Tagammu Party, but had decided to split from it in opposition to its president, Rifaat Said, who had coordinated the party's policies with the former Mubarak regime. This alliance had damaged the Tagammu Party's reputation, SPA members and other leftists say, pointing to Said's agreement, unlike the leaders of other opposition groups, to take part in last November's parliamentary elections, which witnessed widespread rigging and according to experts was one factor leading to Mubarak's fall. A few Tagammu members managed to be elected to the now-dissolved parliament, but other opposition groups charged that the elections had been rigged in their favour, exactly as they had in favour of the majority of former National Democratic Party members. Meanwhile, the SPA is likely to face tough competition from the other leftist parties that have also announced that they will be forming in the wake of the ruling Higher Council of the Armed Forces (HCAF) approving a new law governing the formation of political parties. The new parties law is far more liberal than the old law applied by the Mubarak regime, which made it almost impossible to form new political parties. The Workers Democratic Party, the Socialist Democratic Party, the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the Egyptian Communist Party are only a few of the leftist parties expected to emerge ahead of the upcoming elections. Members of the SPA told Al-Ahram Weekly that many of these parties, including their own, were likely to face difficulties in finding financing, or, equally important, the minimum of 5,000 members required under the new parties law before they can be formed. One leading SPA member who requested anonymity said that the party had thus far only managed to get the signatures of 1,000 members. Among the few hundred people who attended the SPA conference on Friday, many also criticised the party's platform on foreign policy, particularly its call for "severing diplomatic relations with Israel and confronting all forms of popular or cultural normalisation with the Zionist enemy." That position, according to members at the meeting, goes even further than that of the Muslim Brotherhood group, known for its strong opposition to Israel. The Brotherhood, so far the largest and best-organised political group in Egypt, which also announced the formation of its political wing this week in the shape of the Justice and Freedom Party, said that it would remain committed to international agreements signed by the former regime. If the Camp David Agreements signed with Israel during the rule of former president Anwar El-Sadat were to be reconsidered, it said, then this should be done through a popular referendum. Ahmed Ali, a peasant who came from the Delta city of Mansoura to attend the SPA meeting, also criticised the party's social platform, saying it was too liberal and would not be accepted by average Egyptians, "who are religious and hold Islam above any other ideology". Ali was particularly critical of one article in the SPA's programme that called for "confronting all forms of discrimination against women, starting with the citizenship laws and the inequality of wages in some sectors and ending with the right of women to marry and divorce freely while maintaining all their financial rights." "This is against Islam," Ali said. "Islam alone should determine marriage and divorce laws." Abdel-Ghaffar Shokr, the party's leader and a former member of the Tagammu Party, tried to calm the fears of SPA members who opposed the party's programme. The latter would go through another review, he said, before it became final. "We will consider all your reservations in the fourth draft," Shokr said during the closing session of the one-day meeting. The priorities of the SPA at this stage were to confront attempts to abort the 25 January Revolution by members of the former regime and to build genuine democracy in Egypt, he said. Shokr also called upon the leadership of the Armed Forces, effectively in control of the country, to conduct wider dialogue on all the new laws it was about to issue in order to avoid friction with the HCAF. Abul-Ezz El-Hariri, a former MP who also once belonged to the Tagammu Party, called for further coordination with the other leftist parties likely to emerge soon. "It is natural to see several leftist parties emerge during this transitional stage we are going through," he told the SPA conference. "But we have to coordinate together in order to ensure that we will have a strong presence in the next parliament to defend our revolution and to take the first steps towards building a country that belongs to its people, who are mostly poor and deprived."
