What happened during the registration period for the local council elections last week confirms that changing the way we choose the president of the Republic was a step backward not a leap forward. The authorities have imposed enormous restrictions on the nomination of whoever does not belong to the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), for fear that Muslim Brotherhood candidates may win a large number of seats in municipal councils. Since the group won 88 seats in the 2005 People's Assembly elections, the ruling regime has been preoccupied with how to prevent them from making gains in local councils and the Shoura Council (Upper House of Parliament) that may provide the group with the necessary quorum to field a candidate in the 2011 presidential elections. The Brotherhood needs 140 seats in local councils and 25 seats in the Shoura Council. Although they failed to win any seats in the recent Shoura elections last year, there will be another mid-term election in 2010, prior to the presidential race. If they manage to win 140 seats in the upcoming elections to be held on April 8, their task may be easy in the coming Shoura mid-term elections, unless they are seriously rigged. That is why the scene last week was worth contemplating. The civil servants who received the applications were afraid of possible Brotherhood infiltration. Considering the prevailing image of the Brotherhood as frightening ghost, they were weary of the fact that some of them may nominate themselves through legitimate opposition parties. Those in charge have failed to reach a formula reconciling their desire to involve these parties in the political process to complete the democratic "decor with their obsession with the infiltration of Brotherhood candidates. This is a new symptom of the confusion characterizing the ruling regime and its organs. The ensuing scene has been astonishing. Civil servants inventing excuses so as not to accept the nomination papers of several thousand opposition party members and independents. Some of those whose papers were turned down stormed the nomination offices. Fist-fights and even stone-throwing was exchanged between angry people unable to submit their nomination papers and their supporters on the one hand and security forces on the other. Some Brotherhood leaders tried in vain to reassure the civil servants that they had no intention to join the next presidential race, even if they had the necessary quorum, thanks to the ruling regime's lack of confidence in the Brotherhood. The question that forces itself is: Was changing of the method of selecting the President of the Republic through direct elections rather than a referendum a historic error that put an end to any hope for a democratic evolution? As long as the Brotherhood specter of is looming over the political scene and frightening the ruling regime, there will be no elections even ones resembling those held in 2000 and 2005 People's Assembly elections. If this is the case, it means that what has been regarded by many as a step towards reform has, in fact, deprived Egyptians of the partial progress they achieved in the last two parliamentary elections and practically put an end to municipal council elections, without securing a real presidential race. So should we call for the return of the presidential referendum, as was the case before the amendments to Article 76 of the constitution, or should the solution be a call for re-amending of same article, to confine presidential elections to political parties on the grounds that the regime doesn't fear them till now? Or is the solution to persuade the Muslim Brotherhood to review their approach, which frightens this regime and allows it to use them as a scarecrow and a pretext to suppress the already limited political life? Because posing this question to the political elite, which calls for democracy, will whip up a storm as usual and lead to an exchange of accusations and, perhaps, insults between those who are supposed to be thinking together to save our political life, it is likely that we are reliving the moments that preceded the death of political pluralism in Egypt in 1976. However, responsibility for that should not fall squarely on the shoulders of the ruling regime alone, but must be shared equally between the unbridled Brotherhood and the idle opposition parties. Dr Waheed Abdel Meguidis an expert at Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.
