NDP leaders are standing firm against a barrage of opposition attacks ahead of the party's annual conference, reports Gamal Essam El-Din Leading members of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) joined forces this week to defend the party against a barrage of opposition attacks. In a meeting of the party's Media Affairs Committee on Monday, ahead of the NDP's 1-3 November fifth annual conference, Secretary-General Safwat El-Sherif said the NDP must take a firm stand against campaigns to tarnish the image of the party and its leaders. "It has almost become a tradition," said El-Sherif, "that the NDP should face a hostile press campaign ahead of its annual conference and it is the duty of party leaders not to stand on the defensive but to launch counter-attacks." Elements within the independent press, he continued, had seized on the global financial crisis and the involvement of some party members in corruption cases to stigmatise the NDP and propagate an atmosphere of despondency ahead of its annual conference. "Our party does not allow corrupt people to fill its ranks. We respect the rule of law. The NDP is not a place for wrongdoers to enjoy immunity," El-Sherif said. He urged party leaders to change their media strategy to expose "the foreign agendas" of independent newspapers and take on bloggers who use popular websites such as Facebook to attack the party. According to El-Sherif a cabal of NDP critics has placed personal interests above the stability and security of the nation. "These critics suffer from political blindness and moral delinquency," he said. They focus their attacks on the Policies Committee (led by Gamal Mubarak, the 44-year-old son of NDP Chairman President Hosni Mubarak) because they object to the scientific way in which the committee seeks to tackle the problems Egypt faces. Responding to a question by Abdel-Moneim Said, director of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS), about the succession of power in Egypt, El-Sherif said that the succession is clearly regulated by the constitution and that the batch of constitutional amendments passed last year shows that the road to the presidency is via free and multi-candidate elections. El-Sherif defended the party's six-year-old slogan -- "new style of thinking" -- coined by Gamal Mubarak in 2002. Far from being an exercise in rhetoric the slogan, El-Sherif contends, has "stirred a re-awakening in Egypt" and under its banner the membership of the party has grown from one million in 2002 to over three million in 2008. "The latest reports concerning NDP membership show that 65 per cent of the party's members are less than 40 years old, 30 per cent are between 40 and 60, and just five per cent are above 60." El-Sherif announced that in response to the global financial meltdown the NDP would devote a day of debates to its impact on Egypt. "There is no doubt," he said, "that the implementation of the NDP's reforms in the banking sector has saved Egypt from the worst of the crisis." El-Sherif's counter-attack against independent press comes on the heels of negative coverage, particularly in the two dailies Al-Masry Al-Yom and Al-Dostour, of the NDP's series of rallies held in preparation for the fifth annual conference. The two newspapers quoted some NDP members as alleging that the main aim of the rallies had been to attack the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Others claimed that the rallies are just talking shops, often hi-jacked by provincial governors and NDP MPs to promote themselves. Opposition groups, including Kifaya and the Young Members of the 6 April Movement, have said they will prepare an alternative agenda to that propagated by the NDP conference. Kifaya leader George Ishaq told Al-Ahram Weekly that the group will focus on criticising NDP economic policies which for more than three decades have been skewed in favour of the rich. "The NDP's policies, especially from 1990 on, have made the rich richer and the poor poorer," he said. "Under the NDP we have returned to a pre- 1952 situation, with less than one per cent of Egyptians dominating wealth and power and more than half of the population living below the poverty line." The main objective of NDP rallies, contends El-Sherif, is to canvass grassroot members and identify their priorities and concerns. The party's provincial chairmen, he says, will submit reports by the end of the week outlining their members' suggestions. In an NDP rally held on Sunday Adli Hussein, the Governor of Qalioubiya, said the global financial crisis had made it inevitable that the party put social justice on top of the agenda for the second year running. "The NDP should use this conference to send a message to the government that its basic role in the next period is to help the poor and not those who live in compounds such as Golf heights," said Hussein.
