Cairo Magazine - Going for broke

Most of Egypt's opposition rely on funding from the government to survive -- a situation not conducive to their independence

MENA

In addition to a lack of candidates capable of competing in the upcoming elections, the Egyptian opposition also suffers from a lack of funding and resources.

For the most part, Egypt’s opposition parties are chronically broke, both due to restrictions on fundraising and corruption of the system. With membership fees and donations drying up, most of the parties, with the exception of the Wafd and Hizb Al Ghad, rely on an annual government stipend of LE50,000.

Any comparison of the National Democratic Party (NDP) to the opposition highlights the current political situation. Amr Al Shoubky, a political analyst at the Al Ahram Center for Strategic Studies, describes it as an extension of the one-party system. The NDP controls the full range of the state’s resources.

When former President Anwar Al Sadat began the country’s experiment in pluralism, he divided the nation’s sole party, the Arab Socialist Union, into three parties, the leftist Tagammu Party, the rightist Ahrar (Liberal) Party and the “centrist” NDP—which, as Sadat’s party, took the lion’s share of money, media and party buildings.

Ibrahim Dessouqi Abaza, a member of the executive committe of the Wafd Party, estimates the value of these properties at close to LE1 billion.

The opposition, on the other hand, is desperately poor. The Nasserist Party—one of the senior opposition parties—cannot pay the rent on party buildings or the wages of its tiny staff, not to mention its telephones—which were cut off for at least a month at the end of last year until the bill was paid. The party has since collected LE2,000 in donations, now in its account at the Bank of Alexandria.

During its heyday in the 1980s some LE5 million passed through the hands of the leftist Tagammu Party. The majority of this sits in reserves at Bank Misr, with the operating expenses of the party coming out of interest. “The issue of funding is a constant problem for the party. It stands in the way of those activities and public works that we’d otherwise be able to do,” explains Hussein Abdel Raziq, secretary general of Tagammu. Currently, the party is trying to gather LE500,000 in donations to compete in the upcoming parliamentary elections, and is confident of attaining this goal.

Nagy Al Shohabi, president of left-of-center, nationalist Al Geel (generation) Party, says that his party is consistently unable to meet its costs and now has a debt of LE750,000.

Much has been said about the LE300,000 Hizb Al Ghad spent on its first conference convened in the Nasr City conference hall, not to mention rumors about lavish foreign funding. Yet party president Ayman Nour points out that he still hasn’t established a headquarters for the party, and is forced to run the party from his office in Talaat Harb Square and his association’s offices in Bab Al Shaeriya. His bank account, he says, is at “zero.”

The sole exception in the opposition ranks is the Wafd. It has more than LE50 million in the bank, according to Abaza, much of which was collected in the time of the party’s former leader, Fouad Serag Eddin, from donations and profits of the newspaper.

The remaining opposition parties may not be suffering too much, since their activities are extremely limited. Some are known as “family parties”—formed from a party president and his relations—such as the Umma Party, led by Sheikh Ahmed Al Sabahi.

According to Abaza, such parties are founded by individuals with no interest in politics, their sole ambition being to get their hands on government funding.

While leftist opposition parties are demanding increased government support to make up for the decline in other funding sources, the liberal opposition—namely the Wafd and Al Ghad—have refused to accept the government’s annual payments. “The government’s funding is illegal, since it is not stipulated in any law,” say Nour. “As far as I’m concerned, any party that can’t fund itself from its membership fees loses much of its independence.”

Abaza points out that government funding helps keep alive opposition parties without actual popular support that provide the NDP with “democratic decor.”

Abdel Raziq of the leftist Tagammu points out that opposition to state funding comes from parties that represent capitalist interests. “The parties of the Left, on the other hand, represent poorer sectors of society, such as workers and peasants, and that means that they receive only very limited donations. The party has even had trouble collecting its meager annual membership fees.”

The law prohibits political parties from any commercial activity. This has prompted some party leaders to ask permission to carry out limited activities such as for-profit publishing. While the leaders of Al Ghad, Al Geel, Nasserist and Tagammu parties have been extremely vocal advocating this, Ibrahim Abaza of the Wafd rejects the idea. Al Shoubki supports the principle that parties should not involve themselves in any commercial activities, with the exception of the media.

As Al Shoubki points out, there are no clear rules—or even laws—regulating party funding and the matter is largely left to personal interpretations and individual contributions. There is no regulation or oversight of funding for the NDP.

“This haphazard system has distorted political life in Egypt, giving one party all the money and control of the media whilst the other parties barely scrape by,” he said.