28 February 2005
Mubarak plans multi-party polls
- By Neil Mac Farquar
New York Times Service
Cairo, Feb. 27: President Hosni Mubarak asked Egypt’s Parliament on Saturday to amend the Constitution to allow for direct, multiparty presidential elections this year for the first time in the nation’s history.
On the face of it, the unexpected proposal from Mr Mubarak, a former Air Force general who has ruled Egypt unchallenged since 1981, represents a sea change in a country with a 50-year history of one-party governments.
"The president will be elected through direct, secret balloting, opening the opportunity for political parties to run in the presidential elections and providing guarantees that allow more than one candidate for the people to choose from with their own will," Mr Mubarak said, speaking live on television before an audience at the University of Menoufiya in the Egyptian delta.
Some Opposition politicians and other analysts hailed the proposal as heralding a new political era for Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous nation, while sceptics said they wanted to await the details to be sure that the eventual constitutional amendment would not create only the appearance of democracy, a common problem in the region.
Proponents said the measure was the first, central step in reviewing Egypt’s entire Constitution and answered both vocal domestic demands for increased democracy as well as stepped-up pressure from the Bush administration.
The announcement also follows historical elections in Iraq and Palestine as well as the first limited nationwide municipal polls in Saudi Arabia, leaving the region bubbling with expectations for political reform. While bringing democracy to the region has been a major theme for President Bush, the administration reacted with caution on Saturday, saying more details were needed to assess the step.
In Egypt, Mr Mohammed Kamal, a political science professor who serves on an advisory committee of the country’s ruling party, called the move a major decision. "You are talking about the structure of the political system in Egypt," he said.
Other analysts, however, sounded notes of doubt, pointing out that Egypt’s Parliament, dominated by the National Democratic Party, planned to take some two weeks to work out the details of the constitutional amendment. Other countries, like Tunisia, allow a few hand-picked Opposition members to run, but the president gets virtually all the publicity and racks up an overwhelming majority in each election. Egypt’s Parliament has a long history of diluting reforms, critics noted, and may yet announce rules on candidacy that would create the aura of democracy while preventing any real change. Also, he only mentioned amending the constitutional article on how the president is chosen, number 76, not number 77, which provides for unlimited terms.
"This is a way to improve his image with the Americans and to please them with some formal changes," said Mr Ibrahim Eissa, a columnist and political analyst. "While at the same time he is keeping everything else unchanged, like the emergency laws, imprisoning the Opposition, the state controlling the media and political parties existing just on paper. This is deception."
Mr Essam el-Eryan, a leader in the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist group that is banned as a party, noted that the revised amendment might limit the choice of candidates by barring those not endorsed by a legal political party.
The new US secretary of state, Ms Condoleezza Rice, called off a trip to the region on Friday basically to protest the continued imprisonment of a jailed opposition leader that she had also criticised previously.
Mr Ayman Nour, head of Al Ghad, a newly approved political party, was imprisoned on January 29 on allegations of forging some 2,000 signatures to gain a license for his party last year. He denies the accusation, and government critics note that his continued detention seems to undermine the Egyptian president’s commitment to greater democracy.
"The only credible candidate against Mubarak is lying in prison on trumped up charges," said Mr Hisham Qassim, a newspaper editor and vice president of Al Ghad. On Saturday, Mr Nour’s wife, Ms Gamila Ismael, said he had called Mr Mubarak’s call for multiparty elections "an important step towards the party’s and the Egyptian people’s demand for extensive constitutional reform," Reuters reported.
Supporters of the measure called it an important step, believing it comes in response to marked internal changes in Egypt over the past few years, with growing anger over the political system. Even during the small street demonstrations permitted to express solidarity with the Palestinians, for example, demonstrators quickly changed to shouting slogans against the long rule of the 76-year-old Egyptian president.
Over the past few months a tiny Opposition movement has held a number of street demonstrations against President Mubarak, shouting "Enough!" — an unprecedented step here. At his annual meeting with intellectuals in January, virtually all of them spoke out about the need to amend the 1971 Constitution, which includes socialistic rules that now seem somewhat quaint, like reserving half the seats in Parliament for farmers and workers.