The Ghad Party remains mired in legal disputes, reports Mona El-Nahhas The jailed opposition leader and former chairman of the liberal Ghad Party Ayman Nour has called on his supporters to form a new political movement. From behind bars, Nour said the movement should be called The Free Alternative. It was not, he said, intended to replace Al-Ghad. "The Free Alternative will be twinned with the Ghad Party. The two will work together to free society from corruption, oppression and despotism," Nour said in a statement issued from his prison cell last week. Nour is serving a five-year jail term on charges of forging the signatures necessary to legally register his party. In his statement he requested his supporters in Ghad to convene an emergency general assembly during which they announce the birth of the political front. Nour, whose petition for early release on health grounds was quashed by the Administrative Court last week, made his call following a decision by the Shura Council- affiliated Political Parties Committee (PPC) to recognise Moussa Mustafa Moussa as the legitimate chairman of the Ghad. The PPC's 31 July decision in favour of Nour's bitter rival followed a ruling by the Cairo Southern Court, addressed PPC Chairman Safwat El-Sherif, instructing him to hand the LE300,000 financial aid annually paid to political parties to Moussa. Once a close friend of Nour, and his partner in founding Ghad, Moussa broke with his former mentor in September 2005, after Nour was placed second to Hosni Mubarak in Egypt's first presidential elections. Moussa then launched a challenge for the chairmanship of the Ghad Party. Moussa's attempted coup, which led to two years of legal wrangling, was seen by many commentators as a state-orchestrated attempt to mire Ghad in internal disputes. Nour's supporters within the party have asked for a suspension in implementing the Cairo Southern Court ruling. Speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly, Moussa was confident he would prevail. "Nothing is going to stop it," he said, insisting that the legality of his position as party chairman was now unassailable. Official recognition of Moussa as party chairman, believe many analysts, is his reward for stabbing Nour in the back. Moussa denies the allegations, claiming that he was the victim when he was expelled from the party. The move against him was inspired, he claims, by fears that he would expose Al-Ghad's links with the US administration. Following Nour's arrest in 2005 both the EU and Washington called for his release. Following last week's court ruling US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed her disappointment. "I know that there is going to be an appeal and it is certainly the hope of the US that the appeal will come out favourably," Rice told reporters last Thursday, at the conclusion of a four-day trip to the Middle East. The seriousness of Washington's support of Nour has recently been called into question. It has been used, believe many, mainly as a stick to secure concessions from Cairo. It has also allowed Nour's opponents, such as Moussa, to accuse him of being an American agent. "I'm sure that in time people will realise the truth and differentiate between honourable politicians and US agents," said Moussa. "They will realise who is behind the smear campaign against me." He was referring to Ihab El-Kholi, elected last March Ghad Party chairman, and Gamila Ismail, Nour's wife and the party's deputy chairman. Moussa accuses the two of illegally hijacking the party, alleging that El-Kholi, Ismail and Nour were all expelled from the party during the controversial general assembly which Moussa convened in October 2005. But that, point out Ismail and El-Kholi, happened a month after Moussa had himself been expelled from the party's ranks making the general assembly he convened invalid. They intend to contest the decision by the PPC. "We know our battle is going to be long but we will not surrender," El-Kholi told the Weekly. But what of Nour's call for a new political front? "Why should we set up a political movement when we already have a party?" asked El-Kholi. He says Nour's suggestion has already been rejected by members of the party's higher committee, who insist that they must concentrate on winning back control of the Ghad.
