EGYPT: Opposition calls for anti-ruling party coalition in November polls

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

CAIRO, 20 Sep 2005 (IRIN) - One of Egypt’s most vocal opposition groups, the Kifaya ('Enough') Movement, has called on the country’s political parties to form a coalition against the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) of President Hosni Mubarak in parliamentary elections due in November.

"We are calling for a united front in order to strengthen opposition candidates and thus ensure a strong presence in the People’s Assembly," Ahmed Bahaa Eddin Shaaban, a leader of the Movement said in Cairo on Sunday.

Kifaya is a loose coalition of leftist, liberal Islamist activists that became the first movement to publicly call for the end of Mubarak’s rule.

Talks, he added, had started between different opposition movements and parties in order to come up with a single list of candidates. An agreement, he added, could be reached within a week.

"This way opposition forces will not be competing against each other. Instead all of us will be competing [against] the ruling National Democratic Party," Shaaban added, saying Kifaya party members would be included in the candidates' list.

There was no immediate confirmation of the talks by the other parties, including the Ghad (Tomorrow) Party of Ayman Nour.

The parliamentary elections are seen as the real political contest following Egypt's first ever contested presidential poll on 7 September that was won by the NDP.

The final results of the contested polls gave Mubarak 88.6 percent of the votes cast and his main challenger in a field of 10 candidates, Ayman Nour, 7 percent. Nour’s request for a re-run was rejected by the electoral commission.

Mubarak has been in power for 24 years. The election gave him another six-year term as president of Egypt. The poll was, however, marked by a low turnout with only 23 percent of the 32 million registered voters casting their ballots.

"The coming parliamentary elections are very important for several reasons. The first is that the current environment reflects a restructuring of the political arena in which the ruling party is competing not only with the traditional political parties but also with all the opposition social movements that have appeared in the last year," Khalil al-Anani, a political analyst, said

The elections, he added, would also be very critical as judges will have almost complete supervision of the polling process.

"This is in addition to all the civil society groups that have participated in monitoring the presidential elections held earlier this month," he said.

The parliamentary election is also important because for the next presidential polls in six years time, an independent candidate will need to gather 250 signatures from different legislative bodies in Egypt. One hundred of these signatures should be from the Peoples Assembly.

Heads of political parties will need to win 5 percent of parliamentary seats in order to nominate themselves for presidency.

"This is an important factor making the coming parliamentary elections extremely critical in terms of the next presidential elections," al-Anani said.

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