The ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has announced the issuing of the new Party Law, a long-awaited step that will activate political party life in Egypt. The law will allow any group of people to create a party without having to wait for approval from the Committee of the Party Affairs, whose head was the Secretary-General of the formerly ruling National Democratic Party. The approval of any new party will not involve the ruling party, as the ad-hoc committee will consist of senior judges from the cassation and appeal courts. However, the new law, supposed to open wide the door for the creation of new parties expressing the new revolutionary spirit in Egypt, will curb the creation of a new party from the womb of the January 25 revolution. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, other groups will find it very difficult to meet some of the conditions stipulated in the new law, such as having to obtain the signatures of 5,000 founding members from no fewer than 10 governorates, with at least 300 signatures from each governorate. The old, cancelled law stipulated the signatures of just 1,000 people – and even that was difficult for many parties. Today, how can new political activists convince 300 people in each of ten governorates to become founding members of a new party? Even the young revolutionaries, widely supported by society, would have to work very hard over many months to achieve this goal. The chances of founding a new party prior to September's parliamentary elections is fading. The other biggest challenge is that the new law ends State financing of any political party. This means founders have to use their own money or ask the public for donations. Political activists with limited financial resources might be forced to accept donations from some rich businesspeople, who would want to direct the policies of the party for their own ends. If such a party managed to form a Government, we would find ourselves once again witnessing the illegal marriage of wealth and authority, and therefore more corruption and social injustice. The biggest problem is that the SCAF has issued the new law without exposing it to social debate and in absence of a parliament that could have debated and amended it before its endorsement.
