CAIRO: Political party Al-Wasat Al-Gadid (the New Centrist) has filed a complaint with Egypt's National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) against the political parties committee, after the latter rejected its application for official status last month. September's rejection is the fourth time that the government-controlled committee - a part of the Shoura Council and charged with approving all applications by political parties for official recognition - has denied Al-Wasat official status since its first application in 1996. Commentators suggest that the continuous rejection of applications by Al-Wasat - which, according to the party's website includes Christian members - is because of a blanket ban imposed on religion-based political parties. Al-Wasat announced on its website on Tuesday that NCHR head Boutros Boutros-Ghali met Al-Wasat members Abou Ela Mady and Essam Sultan at the NCHR's Cairo office. The complaint submitted to the NCHR alleges that in denying Al-Wasat official status, committee members violated the constitution and Egyptian law by denying members of the party the right to engage in political activity. Al-Wasat's complaint, published on its website, details the events leading to its rejection by the committee. It says that on Aug. 10, 2009 Mady was asked "tens of questions by committee members, and that the committee was also presented with a report confirming that Al-Wasat's political program is distinct and different from that of other political parties - one of the conditions imposed under the Political Parties Law. A new condition for recognition introduced under a 2005 amendment to the Political Parties Law requires that the party gather the signatures of at least 1,000 members from at least 10 governorates. The Supreme Administrative Court upheld the committee's rejection of Al-Wasat's application in 2007 because of its failure to meet this condition. In its complaint Al-Wasat writes that the committee's task should therefore have been limited to establishing that the party had gathered the 1,000 signatures required. Instead, the committee "in concert with security bodies for six days made "tireless efforts to identify similarities between Al-Wasat's political program and that of other political parties.without finding a single similarity. The complaint lists several reasons given by the committee for its rejection of Al-Wasat's application. According to the committee the party's political program is not sufficiently distinct "because it is in conformity with the constitution and "many intellectuals have already espoused ideas put forward in the party's program, and state bodies are working on implementing these ideas. There is therefore no need for the Al-Wasat party. The complaint says that in this way committee members "violated the constitution and the law and betrayed their consciences for a "single aim - opposition to the founding of the Al-Wasat party. Mady told Daily News Egypt that Al-Wasat sent a complaint to the NCHR because "it is the appropriate body to receive complaints about violations of human rights. Mady maintains that the NCHR, which he says met Wednesday to consider Al-Wasat's complaint, can at least "take a moral stand against the committee even if it does not have the power to take any further action. "Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali told me on Tuesday that he would phone [committee head] Safwat El-Sherif and have a friendly talk with him about the issue. I insisted that the NCHR should address something official to him, and Ghali agreed to this, Mady said.
