CAIRO: As election season looms, founder of Al-Karama Party and prominent MP Hamdeen Sabahy discussed with Daily News Egypt his thoughts on the People’s Assembly (PA), the upcoming elections, and Egypt’s political scene.
How do you see the importance of the upcoming elections given the current Egyptian political scene and high aspirations of the voters?
In any circumstances, the PA elections are important as they precede the presidential elections. They also begin a political season which includes the Shoura Council and presidential elections.
I believe Egypt is in a transitional period after the current regime failed to meet the ambitions of its people. Egypt needs radical change but this won’t come in these elections, but might come in the presidential elections. The Parliament has fallen prey to the dominance of the executive authorities within a constitution that doesn’t provide adequate balance between the judicial, legislative and executive authorities and gives the president exaggerated power.
However, the good thing about these elections is that it is a season for political mobilization and a chance to revive the concept of Egyptians deciding on their own affairs. They are also an opportunity for everyone to demonstrate their programs and put them to the test with people, to see if they can win their trust or not. But the shortcoming is that there is no guarantee that people’s opinions will be translated into votes.
Are you afraid of vote-rigging? And what will be your response?
We have asked for guarantees of the fairness of the elections through modifying Articles 88, 76 and 77 to enable judicial supervision of the process as well as allowing people to vote with their national ID cards, revising voters’ rosters, and getting fair media exposure.
They either comply with our demands or we will boycott the whole election. But this has to be a collective decision, that is, a decision of at least half of opposition MPs. If we do that, people will respect us more and the regime will fear us.
What did the opposition learn from the previous round of PA elections and how can you build on it?
Without guarantees to the fairness of the elections, the PA will always remain a weaker institution than the executive authority; it encompasses an artificial, pre-formed opposition.
What we need is a change in the structure through a constitutional reform to balance authorities and guarantee the fairness of the elections to convey people’s voices.
What does the opposition need to do the most now?
In all events, descending to the street is the solution; it is the magical answer that we always talk about but rarely do.
The Egyptian society has witnessed new waves of social struggle of people demanding their rights: they have moved from silence to complaint. They now protest directly in front of the PA to force MPs to respond and convey their problems to the government, in order to force them to discuss these problems even if they don’t solve them; we are now beginning to create our democracy, a true bottom-up democracy.
People want change and they can do it through fair elections. But if this door is closed, then we shall wait for a chaotic explosion of the masses which is very dangerous for the country and won’t be for the good of the people.
Reports are suggesting the existence of secret deals between the ruling party and opposition parties to exclude the Muslim Brotherhood (MB).
This controversy is part of the election season, but I believe the dominant strategy is to keep the same number of opposition seats; however, they would change the type of this opposition through reducing the number of MB representatives from 88 to 20 at most, and put some dummy opposition MPs in their stead. Regarding major parties, they may increase their number of MPs, although such parties have the ability to succeed with several candidates without help.
Some say that opposition parties are divided, especially after the absence of several parties from the "democratic coalition parties" conference last March.
These parties are officially registered so they have more space to work than the unofficial parties, like us. But disagreement on issues like Mohamed ElBaradei’s candidacy for presidency is natural. At the end of the day, however, we all have the same demands.
