BEHERA, Egypt: Former members of the formerly-ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) forged votes in the former parliamentary election and thus should not run for the upcoming elections, said Amr al-Shobaki, an expert in the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. Al-Shobaki also said there are more than one million NDP members who cannot be ignored from political life as their exclusion would be a violation of Egypt's January 25 Revolution. “We must support the noble politicians,” he said in a symposium at the General Egypt Library in Damanhour. Political Science professor at Cairo University, Hassan Nafaa, Damanhour University students and political activists, attended the ‘Future of Political Reform in Egypt' symposium. Al-Shobaki said the phenomenon of buying votes will decline greatly but fanaticism will still exist, especially in Upper Egypt. He stressed on criminalizing the process of buying votes. Regarding the role of Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), al-Shobaki said the Youth Revolution Coalition in Tahrir Square never agreed on the three different figures, Ayman Nour, Hamdeen Sabbahi or Mohamed el-Baradei. But everyone agreed SCAF should run the state's affairs. Al-Shobaki refused to postpone the parliamentary election for an entire year since this decisions could Egypt. He expressed his optimism for the upcoming period, saying the Freedom and Justice Party will not win more 50 percent in the upcoming elections. He suggested the youth of the Muslim Brotherhood to change the image their present leaders and called for avoiding certain trends. Hassan Nafaa illustrated the causes to collapse the former regime. He said tyranny, corruption, social injustice and Egypt's collapsing regional role drove to Mubarak's downfall. The revolution was not spontaneous but emerged from accumulated uprisings and demonstrations including the April 6 Youth Movement and Mahalla worker demonstrations, according to Nafaa. Nafaa believes that SCAF forced Mubarak to step down and the military protected the people during the revolution. “Achieving democracy and social justice is the aim of all political and national powers during the Revolution but it is difficult to agree on one type of regime. There are those who want a social regime, wile others desire for an Islamic regime, or a liberal one, etc.,” Nafaa said. “The political divisions make process of building a new regime a difficult one.” And so he called for all powers to unify and agree on building the regime for a new Egypt, and comply with the Egyptians' will. Nafaa said he supports putting a new constitution and a civil presidential council formed by military figures; Dr. Ahmed Zewail for science affairs; Hassanin Heikal for tourism; Kamal al-Ganzouri for economy and Tarek al-Bashary for the constitutional and legal committee. He also suggests extending the transition period for 24 months this period to have a transitional parliamentary formed by members of the Youth Revolution Coalition and other politicians. Commenting about the foreign financial assistance to Egypt, Nafaa said if the foreign countries really want to help, they should help us to reclaim the Egyptian smuggled money. They could also help Egypt by organizing educational missions for Egyptians and not by granting loans and conditioned fellowships.
