Local council elections will be held on April 8, where candidates will contest approximately 3,300 seats in various local posts.
These elections are particularly important this time for several reasons. For one, they will be the first local council elections to be held since the 2007 constitutional amendments, especially since the change made to Article 76 which regulates the presidential race. This amendment stipulates that presidential candidates must have the endorsement of 140 local council members from 10 governorates.
Second, these elections were postponed in 2006 on the pretext that a new law for administering local councils was in the pipeline; but this law has not materialized to this day.
It’s common knowledge, however, that the decision to postpone these elections was out of fear that the Muslim Brotherhood candidates would take over local councils after gaining momentum following their victory in the 2005 legislative elections.
The third reason why these elections are important is that they come at a time of regression in Egypt’s democratization process, which renders them a new benchmark for the Egyptian regime, and a test of its commitment to transparency and integrity in managing the polling process.
Without a doubt, the real competition facing the ruling National Democratic Party candidates is the Muslim Brotherhood, hence the on-going crackdown on the group’s key members which has been taking place in the past few days, especially targeting campaign managers of Brotherhood candidates.
This comes as no surprise, however. It’s habitual for the regime to try to paralyze the Brotherhood by arresting its leading organizers and other active members, which sheds much doubt on the integrity of the pending elections.
The question is: Will the local elections herald in real change, or will they set a new record to the series of setbacks to Egypt’s political life since the parliamentary elections of 2005?
Unfortunately, indications point to the fact that the NDP wants to take over all the local seats, not only to curb the Brotherhood s attempts to make maximum use of these elections to achieve more public appeal, but also to prove it is the majority party and to assert its dominance over the country’s political arena.
I doubt that any candidate from the other, already ailing, political parties or from the Muslim Brotherhood will rake any seats in these elections. It’s even likely we’ll see a repeat of the Shoura Council elections scenario, where the National Democratic Party won all the contested seats last June.
Regrettably, NDP leaders are oblivious of the fact that everything in Egypt has been moving on and changing since 2005, and that the time has come to change the rules of the political game to reflect more justice, honesty and transparency.
It is therefore necessary that the coming elections be a milestone, marking the end of vote rigging and intimidation of opposition and Brotherhood candidates. NDP candidates should compete and win without any support from the government and its agencies, which is hard to imagine at the moment.
Khalil Al-Ananiis an expert on Political Islam and Deputy Editor of Al Siyassa Al Dawliya journal published by Al-Ahram Foundation.
