Tuesday's local elections could usher Egypt's local administration system into a new age, writes Gamal Essam El-Din The landslide victory of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) in the 8 April municipal elections left political pundits divided over the future role of elected local councils. Academics such as Jihad Auda, a professor of political science at the University of Helwan, are optimistic that the scale of the NDP triumph will boost the move to decentralise power. "These results," says Auda, "will allow for a major overhaul of the 29-year-old law regulating the performance of local councils with the aim of democratising them and decentralising public services." Central to that process, he says, will be to give local councils greater supervisory powers over budgets at the governorate level. In a recent NDP public rally Gamal Mubarak, the son of President Hosni Mubarak and chairman of the ruling party's Policies Committee, said the NDP is currently drafting a new law along the lines Auda is hoping for. "The draft law will take some time because it is intended to change the system radically in order to ensure it is both stronger and more democratic," he said. Senior NDP officials were happy at the fierce competition among party members to stand in local elections. That all political forces, including the Muslim Brotherhood, fought hard to register candidates in the elections is, believes Auda, a signal that local councils are coming of age in Egypt's political and everyday life. "The councils allow direct contact with citizens which means successful candidates can pile up popularity and power." The potential of elected councils as a force to democratise political life and improve the lives of ordinary citizens has long been a subject of debate in parliament as much as in academic research centres. Together with executive municipalities, elected local councils are the backbone of Egypt's local administration system. Councillors normally remain in office for four years, though terms can be extended by an additional year at the request of the president. The councils sit in 10-month sessions between September and June, and their activities are regulated by Local Administration Law 43/1979. Independent lawyer Gamal Assran explains that current legislation governs the operation of councils on six distinct levels, the governorate, city, town, district, local village unit and village, with the representation of geographic areas weighted according to population density. On a governorate level, in Cairo, for instance, voters elect 360 members from 36 districts, while both South and North Sinai elect just 14 each. The total number of elected local councillors at all levels is between 52,000 and 53,000. The total number of local councils in Egypt stands at 5,185 units. Voting in local elections is governed by the 1956 law on exercise of political rights. Unlike parliamentary and presidential elections the entire voting process, including the registration of candidates and the announcing of results, is supervised by the ministries of interior and local administration rather than an independent election commission. The role of judges is limited to overseeing major polling stations. Law 43/1979 is clear about the role of elected local councils -- they are there to supervise the executive municipalities and act as mini-parliaments in the provinces. This, says Assran, generally takes the form of comments and questions directed at provincial governors and the staff of executive municipal units. Recent amendments to Article 76 of the constitution added a further dimension to the mandate of councils by stipulating that any presidential candidate must secure the endorsement of a fixed number of local councillors, in addition to members of both houses of parliament. A number of studies into the running of local councils have highlighted their failure to fulfil the roles they have been set, and some commentators are pessimistic about their future ability to do so as long as they continue to be dominated by the NDP. A recent study by Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS) argued that NDP hegemony over both elected local councils and executive municipalities acted against moves to democratise local administration. "The staff of executive municipal units are appointed by the government and most -- if not all -- of them are members of the NDP, which always fields candidates for the local councils, and whose candidates always win," says the report. It is a situation, argue the authors, that mitigates against the councils' supervisory role and provides a fertile breeding ground for corrupt practices, among them the rampant violation of construction codes. ACPSS analyst Amr Hashem Rabie blames a host of social ills, from deteriorating public services to recent bread shortages, on the poor performance of both elected and executive local councils. A study by the People's Assembly Local Administration Committee during the 2005/2006 parliamentary session pointed out that a majority of council members had failed to attend a single meeting in the previous four years. Rabie recommends that the 1979 law be amended to strip the ministries of interior and local administration of any regulatory role in municipal elections, and argues that governors should be elected rather than appointed. In 2006, the NDP majority in parliament voted to delay the holding of local council elections for two years, promising at the time that the delay would be used to redraft the 1979 law. That has yet to happen, and many political pundits agree with Assran that the real purpose of the move was to prevent a repeat of the Muslim Brotherhood's strong showing in the 2005 parliamentary elections.
