CAIRO: Amid a worldwide economic crisis and a year of scandals, the National Democratic Party’s (NDP) fifth annual conference kicked off this Saturday confronted with circumstances the ruling party has never faced before.
The conference slogan “New Thought for our Country’s Future was dampened by the absence of prominent members of the Policies Secretariat headed by Gamal Mubarak: Hisham Talaat Moustafa, who is languishing in jail on charges of conspiring to murder a Lebanese singer; and Mamdouh Ismail, who fled the country two years ago when a ferry he owned sank in the Red Sea, killing over 1,000 people.
And yet the head of the party’s Organization Secretariat, steel magnate Ahmed Ezz, who is no stranger to controversy with accusations that he tampered with the final draft of an anti-monopoly bill earlier this year to safeguard his own business interests, came out swinging against the opposition.
Speaking on the opening day of the conference, which was attended by 2,700 delegates, Ezz lambasted opposition parties, telling them to look first at their own “failure and impotence on the street before attacking the NDP.
Ezz also took a swipe at the Muslim Brotherhood, without actually referring to the group by name, saying there are those who describe the NDP as despotic, but, he asked, how can an illegal group led by a Supreme Guide who gives himself such great authority level such an accusation against a “legitimate party?
The NDP was probably pre-empting the opposition’s reaction as security forces managed to abort a proposed rally against the ruling party organized by the Kefaya and the April 6 Youth movement.
“The opinion in the streets is well known, he [Ezz] doesn’t represent them.
Rather he represents a select niche of Egyptian society and not the people in any way. The people are very far away from Ahmed Ezz. He forgets that the average wage is LE 120 pounds while he is a billionaire.
“It is not the opposition but the people who are forming blocs against those who have taken their money, Karama party chairman Saad Aboud told Daily News Egypt.
“Ezz has a golden spoon in his mouth; he doesn’t live the suffering of the Egyptian people. They [the NDP] are totally isolated from reality. I am surprised at how they speak, as if they’re talking about an entirely different population, even [President Hosni] Mubarak himself, he added.
The Muslim Brotherhood group’s parliamentary bloc leader Saad El Katatny however hit back, calling the NDP a failure, neither achieving development, stability nor even the semblance of a good life for Egyptians.
“The negative image of businessmen in Egypt is due to the cases currently in Egyptian courts; all this has tarnished the image of the businessman in the collective perception of the average Egyptian, said Nabil Abdel-Fatah from Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. “The perception that they have taken over the country and do not have a social role and all they do is exploit their power to boost their coffers.
“There is also a fear that in the upcoming period that these businessmen will try to use their influence to recoup the losses they suffered on the world markets from the economic crisis, he added.
Party leader Mubarak preferred to take a more global approach in his keynote speech and ignored domestic mudslinging, opting instead to warn of the dangers of the current global economic crisis.
He said that the government had to take measures to preserve Egypt’s high growth rate and insisted that the government and party would continue the reforms promised in his 2005 election platform “without delay .
Abdel-Fatah however is skeptical about such promises.
“There is no forward movement, it is more slogans, he said. “The Egyptian economy will suffer from recession despite all the assurances the NDP has given. These are what we can call preemptive slogans before the crisis hits; they have all been said before.
Mubarak also said that the twin objectives of the party and the government was economic growth and achieving social justice, propping up low-income and middle class families being integral to these aims.
Concerning amending the personal rights law, Abdel-Fatah said, “They have not been able to go forward with it in a reformist sense. The Orthodox Coptic Church is resisting the judicial divorce decrees which have pitted the church against the state and the legal system.
“Another negative for the upcoming period is that the government will propose a new election law which will include quotas for women. This might be the best proposal they are offering, but there is a concern that it will cement the current status quo in the political situation in Egypt and halt any reform in that direction, he added.
