More than five weeks before voting kicks off for a new parliament, the heat is already being felt, reports Gamal Essam El-Din By Monday 17 October 3,204 people had registered as parliamentary candidates in the People's Assembly and Shura Council elections, the vast majority of them as independents competing for the third of seats reserved for individual candidates. Candidate registration, initially intended to be open for seven days, has been extended by four more days, and will now close at 2pm on 22 October. The extension has proved necessary for the various election coalitions to finalise their lists. Abdel-Moez Ibrahim, chairman of the Supreme Electoral Commission (SEC), says political parties had appealed to the SEC and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) for the extension because they had been unable to resolve disputes within the various coalitions over the division of the two thirds of parliamentary seats that will be decided on the basis of proportional representation. To the dismay of many, a large number of the independents who swamped the first seven days of registration were members of the now defunct National Democratic Party (NDP). Semi-official statistics reveal that up to 60 one time NDP affiliates have registered their candidacy, including former cabinet ministers, chairmen of People's Assembly committees and prominent businessmen. The NDP, the burning of whose headquarters was one of the seminal moments of the revolution, was officially dissolved on 16 April. Though there has been a great deal of talk about issuing legislation that would prevent former members of the now discredited ruling party from standing as deputies the SCAF has taken no steps to ban them. In addition to the 60 NDP-independents a number of NDP-offshoot parties intend to field an estimated 200 onetime member of the defunct ruling party on their lists. The NDP is also causing a headache for other parties, particularly the Wafd. The decision to include a number of former NDP deputies on the Wafd ticket -- mainly in Upper Egyptian constituencies -- prompted the resignation of many disgruntled party members. Until Al-Ahram Weekly went to press on Wednesday political parties had yet to resolve their differences over coalition lists. The Democratic Alliance, which once included the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party and the liberal Wafd among a host of smaller parties, has seen a series of well-publicised spats resulting in the withdrawal of the Wafd, the Nasserists, and a number of smaller religious parties. They accuse the Freedom and Justice Party of seeking to exclude other parties from the candidate list. The Democratic Alliance once included 34 members. It is now down to 12. Wahid Abdel-Meguid, an Al-Ahram political analyst and the man in charge of cooking up the Alliance's lists of candidates, expects "the Alliance's final list to be completed by tomorrow at the latest". It will include former Brotherhood MPs such as Saad El-Katatni, Essam El-Erian and Mohamed El-Beltagui, as well as Rafiq Habib, the Coptic deputy chairman of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party. The Alliance's list will also include some leftist-leaning activists from the Nasserist Karama (Dignity) Party, Saad Abboud, Amin Iskandar and Kamal Abu Eita among them. But it is the Freedom and Justice Party's candidates that will dominate the list, comprising up to 60 per cent of the names. Add to this the 166 Brotherhood members expected to stand as independents and the mathematics make a mockery of Brotherhood leaders' assurances, repeated as recently as April, that they would be contesting no more than half of parliamentary seats. The true figure is closer to 70 per cent. The Egyptian Bloc, a political alliance between mostly liberal and leftist forces, has also been disrupted by partisan squabbles. Attempts by the Free Egyptian -- founded by Coptic businessman Naguib Sawiris -- and the Egyptian Social Democratic Parties to monopolise the list of candidates prompted the withdrawal of other members, including the Misr Horreya Party led by political analyst Amr Hamzawy. Hamzawy's party is now allied with the Arab Nasserist party and the so-called Popular Socialist Alliance -- an offshoot of the Tagammu Party -- in a coalition that has opted to call itself The Revolution is On. The youth movements that played a central role in forcing Hosni Mubarak from power will field candidates under the Coalition of the Youth of the 25 January Revolution. It includes the 6 April Movement, the Popular Alliance, the Equality and Development Party and Youth for Freedom and Justice Movement.
