CAIRO: The ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) has again refuted rumors about the succession of power, this time denying a newspaper report that the party's political bureau would convene in the next few weeks to decide on the candidate for the 2011 presidential elections. Al-Shorouk newspaper reported that the NDP political bureau would convene to decide on the party's candidate for the 2011 elections due to the likelihood that party leader President Hosni Mubarak would not seek reelection. "This report is made up and fabricated, NDP spokesman Mohamed Kamal told Daily News Egypt, "there is no truth in it. Besides, deciding the candidate is not the job of the political bureau. The newspaper also stated that the most probable candidate would be Mubarak's son Gamal, head of the NDP's policies secretariat. Secretary General of the NDP Safwat Al-Sherif also denied the report in a phone call to Orbit's nightly program "Al-Qahira Al-Youm, stating that the party would pick its candidate in 2011 during the party's annual general assembly. This is the second time this month that the NDP has had to quell rumors concerning the candidacy of the presidential elections. Last week the party was also forced to deny rumors that intended to dissolve the Peoples' Assembly (PA) as a precursor to facilitate the transfer of power to Gamal Mubarak. Editor-in-chief of Al-Osboa Moustafa Bakry was the first to present this scenario, stating that the party would take advantage of recent proposed amendments to the PA law to bring elections forward. The reason given was to rubber stamp the nomination of Gamal, as the senior Mubarak would step down before the next presidential election. The proposal to reorganize the electoral districts of the PA to add 64 more seats - to be contested only by women in order to boost their presence in parliament - was passed by upper and lower houses of parliament this week. Approving the law fueled the rumors of dissolving parliament. NDP MP Mohamed Khalil Kwaitah told Daily News Egypt that the rumors were unfounded and said there was no talk within the NDP of dissolving the current parliament. "It is merely a rumor caused by what Bakry wrote, he said at the time, "according to the recent constitutional amendments, the decision to dissolve parliament is in the hands of the head of state only. Al-Dostour Editor-in-chief Ibrahim Eissa wrote in a column published Wednesday that "knowledgeable sources had informed him that the scenario was more plausible than believed, for several reasons. Amongst the reasons was the hurriedness in pushing through the new amendments, tense talk in NDP circles regarding the dissolution of the PA, US President Barack Obama's apparent willingness that power be "inherited in Egypt, the repression of the opposition in Egypt and finally the ambition of Gamal Mubarak and the coterie of businessmen that surround him.
