A high-level Egyptian court has ordered the dissolution of Egypt’s former ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), fulfilling a central demand of the protest movement that ousted the country’s former president in February.
But reports of the NDP’s death may be greatly exaggerated. Before the verdict, the party’s residual leadership was already restyling itself for a comeback ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for September, complete with a new name and new leadership.
The Supreme Administrative Court decided on Saturday to dissolve the group and nationalize its assets, which a lawyer for the party estimated could amount to as much as 70 million to 80 million Egyptian pounds ($12 million to $14 million).
Since its establishment by former President Anwar Sadat in 1978, the NDP has acted as a political machine, ensuring de facto one-party rule while providing perks and sweetheart business deals for its members.
Headlines in Egyptian Newspapers on Sunday trumpeted news of the “death” of the “illegitimate” party.
Even staunch opponents of the NDP acknowledged that the party is likely to persist, albeit as a shadow of its former self.
The organization’s continued confidence reveals the limits of the protesters’ goal of deposing the old regime. Despite 18 days of youth-led demonstrations calling for democracy, Egypt’s new democratic system will nevertheless need to accommodate at least some of the same political figures protesters fought so hard to depose.
“They will succeed [in parliamentary elections] but not easily. Not as such that they could as the old party,” said Abullah Helmy, a leader in the Revolutionary Youth Union, one of the groups representing the protest movement. “They need new cash, new bank accounts, new premises, new cohesion. They need new everything.”
Yet the old NDP appears more than ready to turn over a new leaf. Last week, party members elected Talaat Sadat, the nephew of the party’s founder and a trenchant critic of the NDP before the revolution, as their new leader in place of former President Hosni Mubarak. Mr. Sadat announced that he was renaming the party the “New National Party” and purging the group’s ranks of unpopular and corrupt officials.
The party has decamped to a new headquarters in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis after their former offices in the capital’s downtown were razed by protesters in the early days of the revolution. On Sunday, the mid-rise office remained scantily furnished as workers changed signs throughout the building to read “New National Party.”
“We are not the same leaders, we are not the same policies, we are not the same bylaws,” said Magdy Allam, a former member of parliament and one of the party’s top officials.
Mr. Allam described a three-pronged appeal that party officials hope will endear them to a skeptical public. The party, Mr. Allam said, was apologizing for any “wrongdoing” it committed during its nearly 33 years governing Egypt, cleaning up and expelling its corrupt members and changing its bylaws to create a more democratic system of internal governance.
“We are completely reformed now,” said Mr. Allam, who said 22 party members had already been expelled. “We disconnect ourselves from any of those people who are under investigation now in front of the attorney general.”
Yet the list of party members who have been arrested or are under investigation has grown substantially in the past weekand now includes some of the country’s most recognizable politicians.
On Sunday, Mr. Mubarak was transferred from the coastal resort city of Sharm El Sheikh to a military hospital in Cairo, where the 82-year-old will convalesce in police custody after he suffered heart trouble last week.
Both of Mr. Mubarak’s sons are in prison, where they face corruption charges. Former Finance Minister Youssef Boutros Ghali, who is outside the country, and former Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, who is in jail, were referred to court on Sunday where they will also face corruption charges. They are joined by more than a dozen other former party leaders who now face travel bans, asset freezes and arrest.
“Their reputation is polluted, and people will address them as people of the old regime and they will be rejected,” said Mustafa Bakri, a former independent member of parliament and newspaper editor who filed the fatal lawsuit against the NDP. “They can continue and form a new party, but we know that these officials are not going to be members of this. By going after this party, we have accomplished that it is no longer connected to the government itself.”
Mr. Bakri’s suit claimed that the NDP violated the terms of Egypt’s law on political parties by monopolizing power, ignoring judicial verdicts that would have limited its power and hijacking Egyptian state security to intimidate voters, manipulate elections and suppress opponents.
Wagui Hassan Gaber, a lawyer for the New National Party, said he plans to appeal a verdict he said was “politically motivated.” The law states that only the head of the Party Affairs Committee in the Egypt’s parliament can dissolve a political party, said Mr. Gaber.
In a further sign of the legal confusion that has complicated Egypt’s effort to prosecute former members of the regime, Mr. Bakri said the former head of the Party Affairs Committee, Safwat Al Sherif, was himself a member of the NDP before he was remanded into police custody one week ago pending a corruption investigation. Mr. Bakri said he filed his lawsuit with the prime minister’s office, which he said made the judge’s decision “bullet-proof.”
Despite what seems like universal disdain among the Egyptian public, the New National Party is well-positioned to exploit the NDP’s long heritage of one-party rule. In September’s parliamentary elections, the party can rely on its bedrock of support in rural areas, where the old NDP spent generations building a vast scaffolding of influence and patronage.
“The elections in this country are more based on the man than the ideas,” said Mohammed Abdullah, who was head of foreign relations for the NDP general secretariat before he quit last month. “People, they don’t look to the man as a legislator. They look to him as the notable of the village and this man is there to help us to solve every and each problem.”
And even if Mr. Gaber’s appeal fails to reclaim any of the party’s vast financial resources, one party member noted that the NDP’s monied membership, which once included about 2.8 million of Egypt’s wealthiest and best-connected people, remains more than capable of raising enough cash to launch a respectable political campaign later this year.
“We have some members of the party who will donate to help,” said Said Al Far, a top NDP leader. “The ones who collected the old millions can collect new millions.”