Global IssuesEGYPT: Mubarak Men Begin to Resurface
Members of the regime of ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak have demanded to be allowed to run in upcoming elections and warned of violence if legislation to prohibit their political ambitions is passed.
In April, an Egyptian court dissolved Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP), which ruled throughout his 30-year presidency, and ordered its funds and property returned to the state. Dozens of former officials and businessmen aligned with the party have been jailed or are awaiting trial on corruption charges. Others have been removed from influential positions in the government and public sector.
Activists who led the 18-day uprising are determined to keep members of the former regime from re- entering the political arena. They say the NDP — which dominated parliament, municipal councils and business — was built on a culture of patronage and corruption.
'NDP leaders who participated in rigging elections and abused their positions to prop Mubarak’s despotic regime should be kept out of politics,' says political analyst Amr Hashem Rabie.
In the eight months since Mubarak was toppled, the remnants of his now defunct NDP have regrouped into new political parties and are poised to reclaim a place on the country’s political map. No less than a dozen parties have been formed by stalwarts of the old regime, and many former NDP leaders have discreetly joined various political groups.
The campaign to identify and expose these regime remnants has taken on a sense of urgency as candidates register for the first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections. Polling is scheduled to begin on Nov. 28, with the new legislature expected to draft a constitution that will shape Egypt for years to come.
Under election rules set last month, two-thirds of the lower house of parliament will be elected through a party list system and one-third as individuals. Analysts warn that former NDP members are trying to sneak onto party lists because running as independents would make them easier to identify.
Activists and political groups have urged the ruling military council to enact legislation that would prohibit members of the disbanded NDP from participating in local or national elections for at least a decade. The Treachery Law would target members of the dissolved party’s general secretariat and policies committee, local council leaders, and any member occupying parliament in the last five years. Some activists want to expand its scope to prohibit ranking NDP members from holding any public office.
Not surprisingly, the proposed legislation has raised a few hackles. On its website, independent newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm quoted Mahmoud Nafady, general secretary of the NDP-stacked Freedom Party in Cairo, as warning that the law’s application could lead to violent confrontations, particularly in the rural south.
'If (the) Treachery law is activated, I’m afraid that Upper Egypt’s big families will forcibly close voting stations and prevent family members from running in elections, which would probably result in gunfights and extreme violence,' he said.
Expecting that Egypt’s military council, a legacy of Mubarak’s regime, will reject or water down the proposed legislation, youth groups instrumental in the dictator’s overthrow have resorted to a name-and- shame campaign. Dubbed 'Emsek Feloul' (Catch the remnants), the initiative aims at exposing corrupt members of the old regime.
'So far we’ve identified the names and ranks of 10,000 loyalists of the former ruling party,' campaign spokesman Sherif Diab told IPS. 'Our goal is to expose all of the estimated 60,000 who were the party’s leaders, parliamentary representatives and local council members.'
Campaign organisers have put the names on a web site and Facebook page. They also plan to launch a phone campaign and distribute print copies of the blacklist to voters across the country ahead of next month’s legislative elections.
Former NDP members say the campaign is smearing the reputation of thousands of experienced and respectable politicians and businessmen. They point out that three million Egyptians were members of the ruling party, while only a handful were corrupt, or abused their positions.
'Many decent people joined the NDP out of necessity,' says a company chairman who wished to remain anonymous. 'Membership allowed your business to operate, and cleared a minefield of legal obstacles.'
He points out that several leading opposition members are former NDP members who left the party after trying to reform it from within. Other reformers held influential positions in the party until it was dissolved.
'You cannot talk about building a democracy and at the same time exclude certain segments of society,' he adds.
Ahmed Fadel, an organiser of the Emsek Feloul campaign, says that unless the political exclusion law is implemented, it will be up to voters to decide whether they want to entrust the nation’s future to members of a regime that darkened its past.
'Maybe some NDP members were good,' Fadel concedes, 'But it’s not our job to decide that; we’re only identifying them so voters can make (informed decisions) at the polls.'
© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service