Opposition withdrawal seen to exacerbate legitimacy crisis
The withdrawal of the main opposition parties from Egypt’s election amid allegations of fraud and violence leaves the ruling party with a monopoly in parliament but its credibility dented, experts say.
"The pullout of the opposition adds to the legitimacy crisis. It means the opposition are no longer buying into the system. The damage done to the NDP is huge," said Amr Hamzawi of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace thinktank.
The Muslim Brotherhood and the secular Wafd party decided on Wednesday to pull out of Sunday’s runoff, after President Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP) won 209 of 221 seats in the first round of the poll.
Hamzawi said the government would be "unhappy" about its sweeping success.
"They would have liked to keep a 70-percent majority and to keep the opposition to 20 percent. But they changed the center of gravity from the Brotherhood to Wafd."
The election, which was seen as a forerunner to the crucial 2011 presidential vote, was heavily criticized by Egypt’s ally the United States and by human rights groups especially for the harassment and intimidation of the Islamists.
"It’s bad for the reputation of the presidential election, which needs a legitimate parliament and other candidates," Hamzawi said.
The Brotherhood, the only serious opposition force in the country, controlled a fifth of the outgoing parliament, but did not win any seats outright in Sunday’s first round of voting.
The group had fielded 130 candidates, who register as independents to get round a ban on religious parties, after more than a dozen were disqualified and at least 1,200 supporters arrested.
By contrast, the NDP fielded about 800 candidates, many of them competing for the same seat.
Sign of weakness
Observers say the NDP’s decision to have more than one candidate contesting the same seat was a sign of weakness within the ruling party.
"They have not been able to operate in the election like a real political party," said a Western diplomat in Cairo who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"They have not been able to get people behind any particular party platform. They have not been able to impose any party discipline, although it seems this year that they did try very hard."
Senior NDP official Ahmed Ezz said opinion polls conducted by the party before the election showed the Brotherhood had marginal support in districts that were supposed to be Islamist strongholds.
"Whoever understands what the prelude was would not have been surprised by the results," he said.
He added "the headline for Sunday should be: ‘How the NDP brought down the illegal organization,’" the government’s euphemism for the Brotherhood.
Egypt’s independent press on Thursday continued to decry Sunday’s electoral violations and the way the government has tightened its grip on power.
"All this stubbornness towards the parliamentary opposition can only be understood as a step towards finalizing… the project to proclaim Gamal Mubarak the NDP’s official (presidential) candidate," said columnist Hassan Nafaa, writing in the independent daily Al-Masri Al-Yom.
The 82-year-old president is yet to say whether he will run for a sixth term in office, and is widely believed to be grooming Gamal, the younger of his two sons, for succession.
"As an indication of weakness in the party you could come to the conclusion that the NDP itself will be much less effective in terms of being a vehicle or a voice for the succession in Egypt," the Western diplomat said.
NDP spokesman Ali El Din Hilal said last week that there was no direct link between the parliamentary election and next year’s leadership contest.