Victory by design

Stringent electoral laws ensure the monopoly of the ruling NDP in the Egyptian parliamentary elections.

THE first round of the general election in Egpyt was held on November 28. It was a foregone conclusion that the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), presided over by President Hosni Mubarak, would once again win a thumping majority. Ever since the NDP was founded in 1978, it has been consistently winning over two-thirds of the seats in Parliament.

This time the NDP is on the verge of sweeping the board. In the first round, the NDP won 209 of the 221 seats in the 518-member National Assembly. Runoffs for the remaining seats were held on December 5. Of the 518 members, 508 will be elected and 10 will be appointed by a presidential decree.

The voter turnout was said to be extremely low even by Egyptian standards. Only 10 per cent of the eligible voters are said to have cast their ballots though the government is claiming a higher turnout. Many opposition supporters, according to reports, were prevented from voting.

The biggest loser in the elections has been the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which, despite boycott calls from some opposition parties and prominent Egyptian leaders like Mohammed ElBaradei (former International Atomic Energy Agency chief), decided to contest.

In the first round, the MB, which is the leading opposition party, failed to win a single seat. It was predicted that the political establishment would at least allow the MB to have a token representation. But the political overkill ensured the decimation of the MB. The Brotherhood leadership was subjected to tremendous pressure from the state in the past two years. Many of its leaders were jailed.

The opposition parties, including the MB, have alleged massive vote rigging. On December 1, the MB along with the secular Wafd Party announced that it would not be participating in the second round of elections. The MB said in a statement that the elections were marked by fraud, terrorism and violence carried out by the police and thugs. According to Egyptian human rights groups, the elections saw a number of violations, including vote rigging, violence and obstructions of opposition candidates.

The Barack Obama administration in the United States has issued a statement saying that it was disappointed by the numerous irregularities of the poll. The Egyptian government has in turn criticised Washington for its interference in the internal affairs of Egypt. The Obama administration had called on Egypt to hold a fair and free election and allow international observers to monitor the polls. A senior Egyptian Foreign Ministry official was quoted as saying that it is as if the United States has turned into a caretaker of how Egyptian society should conduct its own policies. He added that whoever thinks that this is possible is deluded.

The Obama administration fears that Mubarak's attempts to ensure his son's smooth accession will trigger volatility in Egypt, the Arab world's most populous nation and, under the late Gamal Abdel Nasser, the most influential. The Obama administration wants the pressure cooker atmosphere prevailing in the country to be eased by giving the opposition a say at least in Parliament. Egypt, along with Israel, is among the largest recipients of American aid. But the gap between the rich and the poor has only widened further in Egypt; 12 million of its poor live on less than $1 a day.

MB's defeat

But the big story coming out of the elections was the electoral decimation of the MB by government fiat. The MB was the biggest opposition bloc in the last Parliament, having won 88 seats in the 2005 elections. Most observers had said that the MB would have won many more seats had it been allowed to put up more candidates. The elections of 2005 were relatively free. The Egyptian government, like other governments in the region, was then under pressure from the George W. Bush administration of the U.S. to embrace multiparty elections.

Spreading democracy in the region was one of the reasons Bush gave to justify his Iraq invasion. His Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, had famously said in a 2005 speech in Cairo that for 60 years the U.S. had pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East [West Asia] and we achieved neither. But after the victory of Hamas in the only fair and free elections held in the region, Washington apparently had a change of mind on the issue. Hamas in Palestine is considered an offshoot of the MB. The Obama administration seems to be keen only on expanding the circle of democracy to Latin America and East Asia, in order to isolate countries such as Cuba and China.

Electoral results in Egypt have not necessarily been a reflection of popular will. Less than a quarter of the population turned out to vote in the last elections. Stringent electoral laws have ensured that a genuine opposition party is not allowed to challenge the monopoly of the NDP. In the elections held five years ago, the MB was allowed to field candidates in a greater number of seats. The MB still remains formally banned but is allowed to put up candidates without the party tag.

This time most of the candidates put up by the MB were not allowed to register by the country's Higher Election Commission, appointed by Mubarak. In 2005, the elections were held under judicial supervision. But a series of amendments to the Constitution ensured that this year's elections were held without judicial supervision. This, according to the opposition and independent observers, facilitated widespread electoral malpractices, which benefitted the ruling party. The vote was shortened from three days to one, making it difficult to monitor electoral skulduggery. The NDP spokesman said that there was no need for the party to rig elections as it is very strong.

In the run-up to the elections, the Minister of State for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Moufid Shehab, had predicted that the MB would come a cropper.

The MB, wilting under government threats, scaled down the number of seats it wanted to contest to 135. In 2005, it had 205 candidates. The Election Commission authorities finally allowed only 107 MB nominees despite the strength of the National Assembly going up from 454 to 508 (64 seats are now reserved for women).

A court in Alexandria had ordered that 10 MB candidates who had been debarred by the Higher Election Commission should be allowed to contest. But the Election Commission took no notice of the order.

According to the MB spokesman, thousands of workers and supporters of the party were detained before the elections. There were restrictions on the freedom of assembly. There were numerous clashes between MB supporters and the police, many of them bloody; the police used rubber bullets against MB supporters. We try to campaign in the streets, we get pushed into alleys.

After we've been pushed into the alleys, the police are waiting there to beat us, an MB member of the outgoing Parliament told an American newspaper. The security establishment justifies its actions on the grounds that the MB uses religious slogans like Islam is the solution to mobilise its supporters.

Most independent observers are of the view that the MB continues to be the most resilient party in Egypt despite having to function in a legal and political limbo for the past six decades. It is described as the world's most influential Islamist party. In Parliament, the party had played the role of a responsible opposition, raising issues of concern to the man in the street. The MB led the opposition in the demands for the repeal of the draconian emergency laws that have been in place since the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981. The law allows the state to arrest routinely dissenters and political opponents.

Most observers of the Egyptian political scene are of the view that genuine democracy can be achieved only with the participation of the MB. The engineered results of the parliamentary elections may not augur well for the future, especially as the country seems to be on the cusp of a generational change of guard.

Presidential election is scheduled to be held in early 2011. Mubarak, who is 82 and ailing, has not yet announced his candidature for an unprecedented sixth term in office. The buzz in Egypt is that he is keeping his seat warm for his businessman son Gamal Mubarak.

As Egyptians on the street joke, the country has been enjoying Eid Mubarak continuously for the past 30 years and could very well enjoy another 30 years of the same if the transition blueprint is implemented.

The 2005 constitutional amendments make it difficult for a non-NDP candidate to make a serious bid for the presidency. The total monopoly of power that the NDP will enjoy in the new Parliament will make the emergence of a credible challenger an impossibility.

Mohammed ElBaradei, who was being viewed as a possible challenger, has been virtually silenced by a barrage of innuendos by the state-controlled media.

According to Egyptian and Arab commentators, the results of the 2010 election will make it easier for the NDP to install Gamal as the next President. The new National Assembly is already being described as Gamal's Parliament.