Why Can't Egypt's Liberal Opposition Win Parliamentary Seats

By Blake Hounshell

That Egypt has twenty-one political parties hardly indicates that the country has a healthy multiparty system. Sixteen of these exist as hollow shells, with no organizational apparatuses to speak of and often little real activity beyond publishing low-quality newspapers peddling rumors, innuendo, and frustrated invective. The five legallyrecognized opposition parties that do possess more than a name and a soapbox fared miserably in the first two phases of the parliamentary elections, an outcome that surprises nobody who has been paying attention to Egyptian politics over the past several decades.

On October 9th, one month before the first round of the parliamentary elections, a coalition of ten opposition parties and groups gathered to form the United National Front for Political and Constitutional Change: Tagammu, the Nasserists, the recently-formed Karama (Dignity) movement, the (Islamist) Labor Party, the liberal Wafd, the upstart Kefaya (Enough) movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, the National Accord, and two smaller groups. This new entity was intended to show unity and to convey that opposition to the regime is widespread and crosses ideological and socioeconomic boundaries. But the Front's formation was contentious from the start, as typified by the personalized dispute between Noman Gomaa of the Wafd and Ayman Nour of the Ghad (Tomorrow) Partyleading to the latter's exclusion from the coalitionand the ongoing disagreement between the leftist Tagammu and the Brotherhood over the role of religion in politics. The Brotherhood preferred not to coordinate its candidates with the Front or develop a common platform on the grounds that there was not enough time to do so before the beginning of the elections. More likely, however, the organization was well aware of its own relative strength and did not wish to have to withdraw any of its candidates in order to accommodate the other groups.

Although the final outcome of the parliamentary elections will not be available until the completion of the third stage in December, the overall contours are predictably clear. The Brotherhood garnered thirty-four seats in the first phase of voting alone, which covered eight of the country's twenty-four governorates, and an additional thirty-six in the second set of eight. Though not officially recognized as a political party, the well-established Muslim Brotherhood movement functions as one in many ways, is increasingly tolerated in practice, and has now cemented its status as the dominant political force in Egypt outside of the ruling National Democratic Party. (For more analysis of the Brotherhood's performance, read more in the article An Unlikely Alliance).

The Brotherhood's strong showing illuminates the chronic feebleness and fragility of the opposition parties, who have thus far only managed to win twelve races between them and are highly unlikely to fare any better in the final eight governorates. Even Ayman Nour of the Ghad party, who has been seen by many in the West (including some in the White House) as a new kind of Egyptian opposition politician capable of galvanizing the electorate by challenging the regime from a liberal perspective, was defeated (albeit amid credible reports of fraud and voter intimidation) and is contesting the results in court.

Why, despite a revitalized political atmosphere, do the opposition parties seem weaker than ever?

First and foremost, opposition parties were never intended to be more than the democratic trappings that would legitimize in Western eyes what was actually a firmly entrenched authoritarian system. When Anwar Sadat introduced the multiparty system in 1976 as the domestic accompaniment to his realignment of Egyptian foreign policy with the United States, he never intended the three opposition parties he created to challenge the authority of the state and its new National Democratic Party, which replaced Nasser's Arab Socialist Union. The NDP was to occupy the hallowed center while the liberal Ahrar and the leftleaning Tagammu and Labor Parties were consigned to the right and left margins respectively of Egyptian political life, where they have remained ever since. The Egyptian political system has failed to evolve into a true multiparty democracy in a large measure because it was designed never to do so.

Second, these opposition entities and others that were established since Hosni Mubarak took office in 1981 have never been able to develop coherent programs that might attract significant constituencies. Thus the regime's NDP was left as the only effective party solely by virtue of its ability to provide patronage. Furthermore, even if a party were to present coherent alternatives to government polices, the widespread functional illiteracy of the Egyptian electorate would remain an obstacle to effective mobilization on their behalf. For these reasons, the opposition's discourse remains devoid of real content and thus all elections revolve around the personal qualities of candidates, especially their ability to raise funds for buying votes and mounting a viable campaign. The opposition parties, therefore, function more as collections of individuals running in local races than as organizations with coherent ideologies and related policy ideas.

Last but certainly not least, the Egyptian legal system has been manipulated to stifle effective opposition. Rule by emergency law (that prohibits mass meetings of any kind) since the early 1950s, a pervasive and highly intrusive security apparatus, and an endemic lack of transparency prevents parties from engaging with voters on a large scale, raising the massive sums of money needed to wage modern campaigns, and obtaining useful information on government policies, plans, and statistics. Moreover, governors of provinces, who are appointed by the state, have extensive authority and leeway to thwart opposition groups at every turn. Until external and/or internal pressure forces the government to loosen its system of control and the moribund opposition parties are simultaneously bolstered by well-designed training programs, there is little hope for a viable multiparty democracy in Egypt.