Egypt bid farewell to a politically busy year with the announcement of a new Cabinet committed to making President Hosni Mubarak’s election promises come true, particularly on the economic front.

The shuffle was minor compared to the one that saw Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif sweep into Cabinet in July 2004. While this round brought new business leaders into the executive branch, there was little change at the political level as the heads of the four sovereign ministries (Interior, Justice, Foreign Affairs and Defense) remained in office.

“It is a change that carried no change,” suggests Mohamed El-Sayed Said, deputy director of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS). “The shuffle is based on a certain philosophy. This philosophy aims to maintain the political status quo and to hasten the pace of privatization and move toward a market economy in a way that would please the Americans and show them that some change is happening in Egypt,” he adds.

One of the most striking outcomes of the shuffle was the departure of two veteran Cabinet members, Kamal El-Shazli, former Minister of State for People’s Assembly Affairs, and Mohammed Ibrahim Suleiman, former Minister of Housing, Utilities and Urban Development.

El-Shazli, a National Democratic Party heavyweight, is said by many NDP insiders to be one the top figures in the ruling party’s “Old Guard.” Conservatives within the party have been locked in a lengthy struggle against the NDP’s “Young Turks,” who are largely seen as favoring liberal democratic reforms in both the economy and the political system. The 72-year-old parliamentarian first joined the Cabinet in 1993 as minister of state for parliamentary affairs. His portfolio was halved in 2004 as he was renamed minister of state for People’s Assembly affairs. Still deputy secretary-general of the NDP, El-Shazli was named president of the National Special Councils.

To Said, El-Shazli’s removal from the Cabinet did little to reduce his political influence. “I do not think Kamal El-Shazli is out,” notes Said. “He still holds an essential position in the Egyptian political regime since he is the NDP’s deputy secretary-general and he is a member in the ruling party’s politburo.”

Amr Nabil Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif at a press conference after President Hosni Mubarak swore in the new Cabinet in 2004

This year’s Cabinet heralded in only eight new figures, among them Egypt’s first veiled minister Aisha Abdel Hadi (Manpower and Emigration, also the first minister in memory without a college degree); Yousri Saber Hussein El-Gamal (Education); Hany Helal (Higher Education); and Aly El-Moselhi (Social Solidarity, also called Social Security).

In a bid to hasten the pace of economic reform, the remaining four (Mohamed Younes Lotfi Mansour, Transport; Hatem El-Gabali, Health and Population; Amin Abaza, Agriculture and Land Reclamation; and Zohair Garana, Tourism) are all established business leaders (see sidebar).

“Our first objective is to provide job opportunities through investment. Our second objective is to raise the standard of living and our third goal is to provide services to citizens,” Nazif told the top editors of Egyptian newspapers at a news conference held shortly after the announcement of the new government. He affirmed that the new Cabinet’s agenda is inspired by Hosni Mubarak’s 2005 electoral platform, in which the president pledged to introduce economic reform that would provide 4.5 million job opportunities and raise the average standard of living.

“What guided us from the beginning was the fact that the economic group had succeeded and had to have the change to pursue its mission,” Nazif said.

Managing economic growth remains firmly in the hands of the three core “Economic Team” ministers, including Minister of Investment Mahmoud Mohieddin, Minister of Finance and Insurance Youssef Boutros-Ghali and Minister of Trade and Industry Rachid Mohamed Rachid (whose portfolio grew with the addition of some functions formerly held by the Ministry of Supply and Home Trade).

Associated Press Anti-riot soldiers stand alert as supporters shout near a polling station in Alexandria during the runoff of the second round of the parliamentary elections.

According to Nazif, his shuffle focused on “reinvigorating” ministries that provide public services including the portfolios of health and transport, which are now run by two prominent business leaders.

But some critics were quick attack the notion of trusting business leaders with ministerial portfolios that are closely related to their industries. Ahmed El-Naggar, an economic expert at ACPSS, dismisses the move as “contradicting genuine capitalism.”

“The appointment of businessmen in any government is a crime because the minister maintains his business and his interests [as a businessman],” El-Naggar alleges. “This violates the basic norm of any competitive capitalist system which is the equal knowledge of market conditions. As a minister, he knows about those conditions ahead of his [competitors], and he may even contribute to determining those conditions,” explains El-Naggar.

Not everyone shares El-Naggar’s views.

“I am optimistic,” says Moataz Abdel Fattah, a professor of political science at Cairo University. “This is going to be a positive [change] because former attempts did not prove to be successful. First, the public sector and the process-oriented mentality added to the lack of accountability and transparency — and gave old ministers the green light to satisfy bureaucratic requirements regardless of actual outcomes” he explains.

Abdel Fattah wholeheartedly believes the new ministers’ “entrepreneurial mentality” can help create “genuine development.”

“In a way, you need the mentality of a risk-taker in dealing with traditional problems. Those people are successful in the private sector without being held accountable to anybody, so they have an built-in desire to be successful so they will not accept failure [in their ministries].”

As more than one columnist noted last month: The nation has tried academics in ministerial posts with little success —how could business leaders be any worse?

“The public service is deteriorating. The question is: Why would we hold on to the old methods? I am ready to give a chance to someone who rejects those obsolete methods to fix things.”

Moreover, Abdel Fattah says the appointment of already-wealthy businessmen with proven track records is likely to limit bureaucratic corruption. “Theoretically, those ministers do not need money. They are very rich. They do not even need a salary,” he adds.

ACPSS’ Said postulates that the appointment of business leaders was propelled by the president’s son, Gamal Mubarak. “I believe he had a clear role in selecting new ministers,” says Said. “He has close ties with businessmen. Actually, it is businessmen who represent his [Gamal’s] real constituency.”

In an exclusive interview with Rose Al-Youssef Daily published in four installments last month, Gamal, who is head of the NDP’s influential Policies Secretariat, denied the claims. “I would not allow myself to interfere with the formation of the government or to recommend people [to join the Cabinet],” he asserted.

Gamal did, however, hail the appointment of more business leaders as “a new step” worth trying.

“Let us evaluate it [the step] through the society, the press and the People’s Assembly,” he replied, maintaining that the inclusion of business leaders in the former Cabinet proved successful. He also added that businessmen who joined the Cabinet in 2004 “were transparent and were keen on drawing a line between their public responsibilities and their former jobs. And I think that the experience proved that they were successful”

The shuffle also cut to 30 from 34 the number of ministries as some were merged. The Ministries of State for People’s Assembly Affairs and Shura Council Affairs merged to form the Ministry of State for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs. The local development portfolio was merged with the Ministry of Planning. Both the Ministry of Supply and Domestic Trade and that of Social Affairs and Insurance were eliminated. A new ministry was created instead under the name of “Social Solidarity” to handle supply and social affairs (Domestic Trade went to Trade and Industry), while the insurance function was delegated to the Minister of Finance.

Also, the Ministry of Youth was eliminated and is expected to be replaced by a new authority for both youth and sports.

“The economic success achieved during the last phase made us seek the complementarity of different economic sectors. Thus, we merged the Ministry of Home Trade with Foreign Trade, which will create new mechanisms for the departure toward the market economy. By merging the Ministry of Supply with Social Security, we are creating mechanisms for the protection of consumers,” Nazif explained.

Again, El-Naggar voices pessimism, this time over the delegation of the insurance function to the Ministry of Finance, alleging that the government may use the state social insurance funds to cover budget deficits, a charge Nazif denies.

The formation of the new Cabinet was the latest in a series of political developments that raised hopes of democratization in Egypt over the course of 2005. Last year was also remarkable for the creation of two umbrella groups, the street-based Kifaya and the National Front for Change, a loose collection of old-line political parties thrown together to contest the parliamentary elections. Both won headlines, but had little impact at the polls in either the presidential elections (where they were trumped by now-jailed Al-Ghad leader Ayman Nour) or the parliamentary contests that followed (where the banned-but-tolerated Muslim Brotherhood emerged as the largest opposition bloc in the People’s Assembly).

Despite their failure to influence the polls, Amin Eskandar, a co-founder of Kifaya (the Arabic word for ‘enough’), claims there is a dire need for those groups to keep pushing for what he calls “genuine democratic reforms.”

“Our slogan has been clear since day one. We are calling for the establishment of a democratic system or a parliamentary republic. This [objective] has not been fulfilled yet and that is why the battle for the alternation of power, the abrogation of the emergency law will stay on,” says Eskandar.

Kifaya was formed by a group of leftist intellectuals and activists in 2004 calling for three constitutional amendments that would introduce “genuine” multiparty presidential elections, limit any one president to two consecutive terms in office and curtail some of the presidency’s sweeping powers.

“The slogan will remain as is because we believe that the reappointment [of Mubarak] was illegitimate and the threat of hereditary still looms. But we will fight in the coming phase for the promulgation of a new constitution,” Eskandar says.

Kifaya continues to contest the legitimacy of the nation’s first-ever multiparty presidential elections and still maintains that the constitutional amendment that permitted them remains “discriminatory” against independent candidates. Eskandar says public demonstrations will remain one of the group’s main modes of expression, adding that his group’s top priority is agitating for a new constitution that would empower the legislative branch of government, but he admits his group currently faces two problems: securing funds and building a solid structure to group all Kifaya’s sympathizers under one umbrella.

“We are facing some complex problems such as how to turn this huge number of sympathizers into active members without falling into the trap of forming a political party,” says Eskandar, adding that almost 20,000 people have signed Kifaya’s manifesto. He admits the group only has 3,000-5,000 active members.

He also points to the dearth of funds. “Up till now, we have been handling this problem by putting up the money ourselves [from the group’s leaders], but that is not enough,” he says.

Those problems do not threaten the existence of Kifaya, however, although they may likely reduce the group’s efficacy, Eskandar contends.

He rules out the transformation of Kifaya into a political party, saying it represents people of too many ideological persuasions to see it agree on policy issues.

“We would like Kifaya to remain as a public initiative,” he says. “This was launched by several political currents and individuals who agreed on one issue which is [the establishment] of a democratic system in Egypt. This issue cannot set a political platform for a party. It can represent one of several tenets of a platform, but it does not offer a comprehensive vision for social concerns.”

Yehia El-Gamal, a former Cabinet member and the vice-president of the non-partisan opposition group the National Coalition for Democratic Transition (NCDT), believes those groups should organize themselves into a new opposition party.

“There is a need for establishing a new party,” El-Gamal says. “We have no parties at all. We have a big party that is highly integrated with the state administrative and security machineries. If you dissociate it from those machineries, it would not be any different from [other parties]. As for the three big parties —Al-Wafd, El-Tagammuah, and the Nasserists — they were severely defeated in the parliamentary elections, which showed that their relationship with the masses is very weak.”

NCDT was created in June 2005 by a group of veteran politicians and former Cabinet members. At the top of that coalition was Aziz Sedqi, who served as prime minister under President Anwar Sadat. Sedqi and El-Gamal were also the architects of the National Front for Change (NFC), the alliance of 11 opposition parties and groups formed ahead of the parliamentary elections. The alliance included the nation’s three main parties, in addition to the Labor Party (which remains officially suspended as an official party by order of the Shura Council’s Political Parties Affairs Committee), Kifaya, the Popular Movement for Change, the would-be Al-Karama (Nasserist) and Al-Wasat (Islamist) parties, the outlawed Revolutionary Socialists party and the NDCT.

The Front had one common list of candidates who ran against the NDP in more than 200 constituencies; the NFC won just 15 seats.

“I believe the formation of the Front was the biggest achievement made by the alliance,” says El-Gamal, who says its poor showing at the polls wasn’t a significant failure.

“It was formed days before the elections and it was not expected to achieve concrete success. Now, the Front intends to address the masses in order to fight corruption and despotism, to change laws that regulate political parties and political right and revise the constitution,” he states.

But can the Front fulfill this mission while the nation’s three main parties are riven by internal disputes after their poor performance in the elections?

Al-Wafd, which fielded more than 100 candidates, earned six seats, El-Tagammuah two, and the Nasserists none.

Each party has since descended into conflict as younger members have demanded their entrenched party leaders — most of them well above the mandatory retirement age of 65 — step down and let a new generation have its shot.

At the nation’s oldest liberal party, those calls culminated in the sudden dismissal of the party’s president, Noaman Gomaa, who came under sharp attack for failures of leadership after his poor showing in both the presidential and parliamentary elections. Gomaa, who placed third in the presidential race last fall, earning almost 3 percent of the total vote. (See newsreel, page 24, for more details.)

The liberal Al-Ghad Party, which was expected to reinvigorate political opposition in Egypt when first established by prominent opposition leader Ayman Nour in the fall of 2004, faces similar disputes. The first split came after Nour dismissed four party leaders in September 2005 on grounds that they had “drifted away from the party’s consensus.” The exiles contested Nour’s leadership, accusing him before the Shura Council’s Political Parties Affairs Committee (PPAC) of having violated the party’s constitution and misusing his authority.

The rift has produced two camps, each claiming to be the legitimate Ghad Party: Nour’s camp and the exiles. The PPAC consulted the State Council (Maglis El-Dowla) before deciding on the matter and is expected to release its report in mid-February. Al-Ghad was excluded from the Front this fall as the Wafd’s Gomaa allegedly refused to work with Nour, himself a dissent from Al-Wafd whom Gomaa dismissed in 2001.

Nour, who was Mubarak’s main opponent in the presidential elections, is now serving a five-year sentence after being convicted in December of forging signatures on 1,400 applications for party membership. The 41-year-old lawyer and former parliamentarian had to provide the documents to the PPAC as part of his application for official party status. Five other co-defendants faced the same charges and claim Nour ordered them to forge the documents; one of them, however, recanted his statement in late June, alleging that he had been pressured by investigators to testify against Nour.

“The Front will stay, and I do not think it will be affected by those disputes,” says Hassan Nafaa, a professor of political science at Cairo University. “The Front will not die because there is still coordination between the Muslim Brotherhood, Kifaya and NCDT. All three are not officially recognized but they are the most active forces in the society that express the masses best,” says Nafaa, who is also an NCDT vice-president and an active member in the NFC.

Essam El-Erian, a prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s reform camp, contends that the disputes can strengthen the Front.

“Those disputes would encourage political parties so parties would get stronger. Ultimately, the Front will get stronger, too, because a front that unites strong [parties] is better than a front that unites weak ones,” says El-Erian, affirming his group’s commitment to the union’s objectives.

Nafaa adds that the Front is looking forward to uniting all opposition parliamentarians, including those representing the Muslim Brotherhood, in one bloc against the NDP.

Although he does not rule out the possibility of opposition parties reaching a consensus, Hussein Abdel Razeq, secretary-general of El-Tagammuah party, questions Nafaa’s aspirations, pointing out to ideological differences between secular parties and the Islamist group.

“How would we coordinate with the Muslim Brotherhood on the question of amending the constitution? They call for an Islamic state and we want a civil state,” says Abdel Razeq. (Tagammuah Party leaders have consistently accused the Muslim Brotherhood of breeding terror. The party had reportedly opposed the inclusion of the Brotherhood’s candidates on the National Front’s list of candidates for the parliamentary elections, but the Brothers maintained they would coordinate with the Front in pushing for reform demands after the elections.)

El-Gamal says the animosity between the leftist party and Al-Ikhwan is one of the factors that may weaken the Front, but Nafaa counters that the NFC is pinning its hopes on what it calls the “silent majority” to bring about a genuine political change in Egypt. To reach the masses, the Front plans to hold demonstrations, public conferences and use opposition media outlets to publicize its reform demands, he explains.

Cairo University’s Abdel Fattah questions opposition groups’ abilities to mobilize the masses.

“They are not effective among the masses and they will not reach the point where we see millions of Egyptians take to the street to call, for example, for free and fair elections or for the independence of the judiciary,” says Abdel Fattah. “Democratization is not a public demand in Egypt. By looking at how the ordinary Egyptian citizen perceives his political rights, you find out that he thinks those rights are a luxury.”

In the meantime, Abdel Fattah dismisses Kifaya’s political discourse as “intimidating.”

“Their overblown opposition and their verbal humiliation of significant figures in the country intimidate the masses and discourage them from joining their groups,” says Abdel Fattah. “Instead of slogans, I want practical solutions to problems. You say ‘No to Reappointment, No to Hereditary Succession,’ so who would you like to have instead [of Mubarak]? Give me a replacement” et