The Al-Dostour Party decided Tuesday to halt its internal elections, following internal disagreements over the voters’ database and some appeals on the candidates running for the elections.
The party elections were postponed to an unknown date. The party was faced by severe criticism through social media, as some accused it of “incompetence”.
In the meantime, the four campaigns in the party are continuing the electoral competition. The “Together we can” campaign holds the party’s most known figures, like Gameela Ismail and Khaled Daoud.
Three others campaigns presented themselves: “Why not”, “Change comes through proper thinking” and “We will develop alternatives”.
“There have been no appeals against the candidacy of ‘Why not’ members,” spokesperson of the campaign Adel Younes told Daily News Egypt Wednesday, adding that no dates were set yet to look into the appeals.
The campaign presented its vision and a programme composed of seven steps to reinstate the party. More importantly, “Why not” announced two financial plans. On the short term, the campaign’s “emergency plan” is expected to collect from EGP 30,000 to 60,000 over between three to five months. On the long term, the campaign aims to stabilise EGP 2m as annual revenue in the first 18 months.
The current problems they noted are the lack of communication between party members, no turnover in administrative positions, marginalisation of party members and exclusion from party policy making.
The “Why not” campaign’s candidates are Ahmed Metwally for party presidency, Sahar Ibrahim for Secretary-General and Mohamed Safwat for Treasurer.
As for “Change comes through the mind” campaign, spokesperson Ola Mohamed said that there have been objections to the candidacy of their presidential candidate Ahmed Bayoumi, but that they were rejected, “and so he has all rights to run”.
The campaign based its speech on “bearing responsibility” for the past four years since the revolution, changing its tone to reach goals by understanding and learning from past experience.
The problems the campaign observed are that the party was too self-centred and away from the people, saying the party must prioritise public causes by having defined roles to handle external affairs (such as the president, vice-president and political bureau) and internal affairs (such as the secretariat general).
The campaign stated its main target is to change public perceptions towards democracy. Bayoumi is the candidate for party president, Belal Saeed for Secretary-General and Yehia El-Sayed for Treasurer.
On the other hand, Alaa Abdel Samie, spokesperson for “We will develop alternatives” campaign, said that they had sent appeals to the party’s electoral committee, claiming that more than 900 party members were denied voting or candidacy, and praising the decision to postpone the elections.
The campaign focused more on developing the party’s internal structure and pushing it forward amid leading political parties on the scene, by studying various political models. The campaign said the party suffered mismanagement and wants to establish itself as a “gap filler” in the current political situation, whether by the government or by political parties. It added that new means of attracting financial resources need to be sought.
The campaign has well-known lawyer Tamer Gomaa as the presidential candidate who played roles in post-revolutionary political committees, such as the National Salvation Front. Shady Saad is running for Secretary-General and Mohamed Youssef as Treasurer.
