CAIRO: A senior member of Egypt s ruling party announced his resignation from the party Tuesday to protest what he called its failure to implement democratic reforms. Osama El Ghazali Harb is a member of the National Democratic Party s influential policy committee and said he was quitting after the committee, which is led by Gamal Mubarak, failed to adopt suggestions he and other pro-reform members have made. Egypt is going through a dreary void due to ... the inability of the ruling party to offer alternative policies, he said. When I joined the committee I thought they are after real reform, but things have been going in a different direction, he told the Associated Press. Harb is a member of the upper house of parliament, a prominent political scientist and editor of the prestigious International Politics magazine, said he will join other disgruntled politicians to launch a liberal opposition party. Gamal Mubarak has presented himself and his policy committee as a proponent for greater democracy within the government of this top U.S. ally in the Mideast. Last year, President Mubarak unveiled what was touted as the centerpiece of a new reform program by the government: the country s first multi-candidate presidential elections. But since then, reformists hopes have been deflated. The second-place winner in the September presidential election has since been imprisoned on forgery charges seen by many as trumped up to eliminate him from politics. Parliamentary elections in November and December were marred by widespread violence against opposition voters and allegations of fraud. Secular opposition parties have been severely weakened, while the opposition Muslim Brotherhood gained strength, winning nearly 20 percent of parliament s seats in the voting. Harb said the new party he and other reformers are hoping to found would provide an alternative. We cannot stay sandwiched between the ruling party and the Muslim Brotherhood, he said. Harb has been an outspoken critic of the government even while he sat on the NDP policy committee. His resignation will likely damage the committee s already weakening reformist credentials. Many Egyptians believe the committee is being used by Mubarak s son to consolidate his power base within the government. Another committee member, Hala Mustafa, has also been critical of the slow pace of reforms. Mustafa is editor of Egypt s most respected political quarterly, Democracy, and told visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that government controlled media are harassing pro-democracy reformers. Writing in The Washington Post before that, Mustafa went so far as to accuse Mubarak s NDP of extending its hold on power by further infiltrating the security services, government bureaucracy and national media. AP
