NDP sources expect the individual candidacy system to apply to parliamentary elections in 2010, reports Gamal Essam El-Din When constitutional amendments were approved by public referendum two years ago leaders of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) were in a hurry to assert that they would be soon followed by a change in the electoral system. They argued that amendments to Article 62 of the constitution would make it easier to switch from a system of individual candidacy, in use since 1990, to a party slate system without the results being declared unconstitutional, as well as allow for a minimum quota of women in both the People's Assembly and Shura Council. Over the last two years more than one senior NDP leader has been anxious to heap praise on the party slate system. During the NDP's congress in 2007 Moufid Shehab, NDP assistant secretary-general and minister of stage for legal and parliamentary affairs, said a collective, or slate, system would strengthen the performance of opposition parties. "It also stands against thuggery and acts of hooliganism during election campaigns and would ban outlawed groups which mix religion with politics -- such as the Muslim Brotherhood -- from contesting elections and winning seats as independents," he told delegates. Two years later, and a year ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for 2010, and it seems that NDP leaders have changed tack. Sources within the party said last week that there was growing support for the application of individual candidacy in 2010. A parliamentary source close to the NDP's Policies Committee, led by Gamal Mubarak, said "debate in the committee has shown that most NDP members still favour candidates running on individual basis". "When constitutional amendments were first drafted in 2007 Article 62 was amended to encourage more active participation in political life," he said. "We thought a switch in favour of the party slate system would be a progressive step, reinforcing competition among political parties. Now we are a year away from elections. The general feeling is that while a change will be useful at some future date there is too little time to implement it immediately. The party slate system requires strong political parties with a real presence on the political map. Such conditions do not exist at the moment." An opinion poll conducted by the Policies Committee in several governorates reinforced the same view, with a majority of grassroots members in favour of retaining the individual candidacy system for the 2010 elections. "The vast majority of members in villages, towns and even in cities like Cairo and the individual candidacy enabled them to freely choose their representatives in a simpler way," said the source. Refaat El-Said, chairman of the leftist Tagammu Party, told Al-Ahram Weekly that "selecting an electoral system should be a matter of national dialogue between the NDP and opposition parties rather than a unilateral decision made by the ruling party." "The opposition parties have no objections to any election system. The problem lies not with the system but with how free elections are from rigging and irregularities." On the issue of increasing the number of seats for women in parliament, the NDP source expected the law on the exercise of political rights to be amended at the end of the current parliamentary session. Other sources revealed that the Policies Committee is currently debating ways in which to increase female representation. Shehab appeared to favour two seats in each governorate being reserved for women. "Since there are 28 governorates in Egypt the number of seats reserved for women in the People's Assembly would be increased to 56," he said. However, he stressed that the NDP has not yet reached a final decision on the issue. "The problem is that some governorates like Cairo and Alexandria are densely populated, while others like South Sinai and Marsa Matrouh are thinly populated. It is unfair to give women in Cairo or Alexandria the same number of seats allotted to women in South Sinai or Marsa Matrouh," said Shehab. There is also the problem of adding 56 seats to the People's Assembly. Currently the assembly has 454 members, 444 of them elected MPs and 10 appointed by the president. The addition of 56 will swell the assembly's ranks to 510 MPs. "So," said Shehab, "we have a compromise option -- halving the number of seats allocated for women in governorates to just 28, allotting one seat for women in each of the scarcely populated governorates and two in more densely populated governorates." Shehab said the same rule could be applied to Shura Council which has 264 members, a third of them presidential appointees. The council currently includes 22 women, just one of whom is elected.
