Lebanonwire, January 28, 2003

The Daily Star

Probably no Egyptian opposition party can claim never to have done a deal with the government; still, the actions of Egypt’s Wafd Party in regard to the ouster of a Muslim Brother parliamentarian have been regarded as more than the usual sleaze.
Gamal Heshmat, deputy from the north Delta town of Damanhour, was one of 17 Muslim Brothers to have won a seat in the People’s Assembly in the 2000 elections. A first round of voting saw the field of candidates reduced to Heshmat and his opponent from the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP); the second saw the Islamist triumph. However, Kheiry Kilij, the candidate of the liberal constitutionalist Wafd Party, filed suit against the results. The Court of Cassation ruled that gross irregularities in the voting prevented Kilij from competing fairly with his NDP opponent.
Given the numerous irregularities that plague Egyptian elections, this kind of decision comes down all the time. As many such seats are held by the NDP, however, Parliament almost inevitably ignores the ruling. But the leadership loses no opportunity to be rid of an Islamist. Heshmat in particular is a firebrand, leading the Brothers’ onslaught on cultural issues (campaigning against “indecent” books and beauty pageants) and foreign policy (demanding that the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty be renegotiated). The People’s Assembly stripped Heshmat of his membership and thereby forced a rematch.
Damanhour on Jan. 8 looked like any other Egyptian town on election day when the Brothers field a candidate. Thousands of black-clad riot troops backed by armored vehicles surrounded polling stations to prevent Heshmat supporters from entry, according to both Brothers and independent observers.
Kilij won 16,862 votes to 965. Sources close to Kilij’s campaign acknowledge that security intervened, but claim the Wafd Party did not coordinate with the government ­ the regime simply pitches in to help whenever anyone runs against a Brother. Officially, however, the party was not the least bit apologetic. Al-Wafd newspaper declared the results “an honest expression of the will of the people of Damanhour;” Kilij blamed the immense discrepancy in Heshmat’s tally between the original elections (13,000 votes) and the rerun (965) on the Islamists having neglected Damanhour’s problems in favor of radical grandstanding on Al-Jazeera satellite TV. But the rest of the opposition was aghast. Even many Wafdists, including two members of its parliamentary delegation, condemned the intervention. Analyst Wahid Abdelmeguid, a member of the party’s top steering committee, issued an apology “in the name of all honorable Wafdists.”
Egypt’s opposition parties have a long history of co-option by the regime. Many print their party newspapers on state presses and are often not billed (but back-billed when they cross red lines). The leftist Tagammo Party savaged the Islamist movement in the early 1990s (a move admittedly in line with their secular principles) and was rewarded when its secretary-general was appointed to the upper Shoura Council house of Parliament.
The Wafd also has a long history of cozying up to the state ­ in 1998, for example, it campaigned against “yellow press” abuses while the government shut down a number of dailies, including the respected independent Al-Dustour. Nor is Kilij the first opposition candidate to see state intervention on his behalf. However, the Wafd’s complicity in the Damanhour events comes at a time when the opposition is unusually united in calls for democratization, and consequently bears a greater stigma.
The gap between the Wafd’s democratic principles and the party’s actual behavior has long been noted. The Wafd has an illustrious pedigree and at least in its first decade was a populist organization whose strength largely derived from its ability to mobilize the public. It was banned after the 1952 revolution, but reconstituted in the 1970s and 1980s as part of Presidents Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak’s experiments in a controlled multiparty system.
However, party patriarch Fouad Serageddin had a distrust of populism. The party of the back streets became a party of the backrooms, both in its internal dealings and in its relations with the state. Although individual members, many of whom are quite wealthy, are able to win elections, the party has little presence in political arenas such as the universities and the professional syndicates, and it often seems as though there is a constitutional liberalism-shaped hole in Egyptian political fabric.
Many Wafdists have chafed under these policies. Prominent activists tend to owe membership to family links with the pre-revolutionary Wafd rather than attachment to current leadership, and many think the party should be much more confrontational in dealings with the government. Serageddin’s commanding presence kept differences in check, but after his death in 2000 the party frayed. Wafdist dissidents were angry that the new president, Noaman Gomaa, refused to change the by-laws which had allowed his predecessor to pack party organs with his own supporters. As the rancor grew, the Wafd’s parliamentary delegation shrunk from seven to four in the year following the 2000 elections, with two delegates expelled and a third resigning. The party organ, Al-Wafd daily, has also hemorrhaged some top journalists.
In a normal political system, disappointed Wafdists would be free to break off from the old party and form a new one. The state’s political parties committee, however, uses any excuse to deny applicants a party license, leaving many of Egypt’s most talented politicians the choice of either kicking their heels under the existing patriarch or going independent and losing all the benefits ­ access to a newspaper, a support network, name recognition ­ that party membership confers.
Meanwhile, the limited number of parties on the scene makes them all the easier to manipulate. It’s all very well for the opposition to issue united calls to reform parliamentary voting, directly elect the president, or lift emergency law, but as long as parties like the Wafd are willing to break ranks and take handouts from the regime at the first opportunity, those calls will lack much credibility.

Steve Negus is a Cairo-based journalist and former editor of the Cairo Times. He wrote this commentary for The Daily Star

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