Whether members of Egypt's defunct ruling party will be allowed to run in parliamentary elections and whether the Damascus regime is close to collapse are the biggest questions of the moment. Doaa El-Bey and Rasha Saad glean the answers The passing of a ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court allowing members of the disbanded National Democratic Party (NDP) to take part in the parliamentary elections, overturning a verdict issued last week by a provincial administrative court which banned the same NDP members from contesting the elections, added confusion to the already uncertain atmosphere of the upcoming poll. Newspapers followed the reaction and effect of both rulings. Al-Wafd on Monday stated "Supreme Court considers postponing elections". Al-Shorouk on Tuesday quoted the Supreme Electoral Commission as saying there was no intention of postponing elections. Al-Ahram on Sunday had "Growing judicial battles between political powers and NDP remnants". Al-Akhbar on Monday headlined "Supreme Administrative Court today decides whether to include or exclude NDP members in the elections", and Al-Masry Al-Youm said "Political powers give the military council 72 hours to withdraw El-Silmi's document". The editorial of the official daily Al-Ahram described the ruling issued by the provincial court as casting doubt in all the political activities carried out by the previous members of the NDP who exceeded a million people. The editorial wrote that the controversy on the fate of the leaders of the NDP would not be settled until a law was issued to deal with cases of political corruption committed by previous officials or former members of the NDP. In that way, the edit added, we can guarantee justice for whoever is not involved in political corruption. Democratic regimes worldwide do not perform collective political exclusion for certain political powers or parties. However, in democratic transformation processes through revolutions, political exclusion is only carried out in cases of political corruption or participation in policies that lead to destroying society, the edit explained. "Given that the 25 January Revolution was known worldwide as a civilised, peaceful revolution, it should continue its civilised manner that conforms to the democracy we are seeking. Thus there is no alternative to issuing a law on political corruption," the edit added. Khaled Gabr noted that the NDP was still ruling Egypt. He wrote in the official daily Al-Akhbar that the parliamentary elections were facing various problems. As soon as the differences over the election system and the constituencies were settled, a new law that banned former NDP members from participating in the elections was issued in Daqahliya. Given that another ruling was passed five days after that and a ruling was issued in Alexandria earlier to allow the NDP members to participate, and that more rulings could be issued from other places, these contradictory rulings will take the parliamentary elections into a dark tunnel, Gabr added. After the Daqahliya ruling, Gabr explained, analysts differed over whether the ruling was compulsory, whether it would be applied to all constituencies or in the constituencies where it was issued and whether it would be applied to the upcoming parliamentary elections or its application would come after issuing a final ruling regarding the matter which could take years. "Egyptians revolted against the Mamluks, the French and British occupation and King Farouk and expelled them all. They rebelled against [Hosni] Mubarak, Safwat [El-Sherif], [Ahmed] Ezz and other NDP leaders. Nevertheless, they are still present and ruling either from Tora Prison or from inside state institutions," Gabr concluded. Hanan Khawasek questioned what were the articles or constitutional articles on which the Daqahliya ruling was based. The ruling, she wrote, stirred controversy over whether it achieved social justice for all citizens. Social justice was one of the basic demands of the 25 January Revolution. The ruling, she added, is likely to deprive some three million citizens of one of their constitutional rights as it is the right of any citizen to join any political party that appeals to them. In addition, most of those three million people did not have a say in the previous election. "The ruling was issued without referring to constitutional rights of the citizens. It takes the election process into a dark alley. I assume that that matter needs a measured review to spare voters, who are looking for a democratic election, conflict or violence between the candidates," Khawasek wrote in the daily Al-Wafd, the mouthpiece of the opposition Wafd Party. She noted that political parties and presidential candidates agreed on just two things -- using violence to reach their goal and that their programmes do not include anything about dealing with widely spread disorder. Thus she called on the ruling military council to shoulder its responsibility to the fullest until the election is complete. People want their country protected, she summed up. Mamoun Fendi wrote that some people consider the upcoming parliamentary elections as the green light at the end of the dark tunnel. However, others believe that the green light is the light of a train barrelling in the opposite direction. Indeed, the writer added, the elections could be the light of the train coming in the opposite direction or the start of the collision rather than the green light at the end of the tunnel. He considered the spread of violence as a further proof for that argument. While everybody is waiting for the collision, he added, Deputy Prime Minister Ali El-Silmi's document came as a last minute attempt to stop the train or slow it down to avoid a collision. Fendi underlined that the document was not El-Silmi's idea but that of the ruling military council which uses the present government as a buffer zone through which it presents the things that it wants without confrontation with the people. Thus he wrote that if the military council wants to issue principles that should govern the new constitution, they should openly and clearly declare them without using the government as a buffer. The other thing that Fendi called for is postponing the elections which, he said, will take place in an atmosphere of fear and disorder and which do not conform to the constitutional declaration which bans the formation of political parties on religious bases. Parties like Nour, Wasat and Justice and Development are religious parties which openly declare that they want a religious state. "It will go down in history that the ruling military council was the sponsor of a religious state in Egypt. Thus the right way out is not to stop the parliamentary elections because the light that we see at the end of the tunnel is not the end of the road but the light of a train coming in the opposite direction. If we do not stop, there will be a collision," Fendi wrote in the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm.
