CAIRO, 18 August 2005 — Egypt’s first contested presidential election campaign opened yesterday with little fanfare and few signs the race is likely to excite millions of Egyptians after 50 years on the sidelines of politics.
President Hosni Mubarak, 77 and in power since 1981, had the only paid political advertisement in a major newspaper — a full page showing him in smart executive guise and listing the six themes of his three-week election campaign.
His main challengers in a field of 10 are feisty young lawyer Ayman Nour of the liberal Ghad (tomorrow) Party and Noman Gomaa of the Wafd Party, a revival of the party which dominated politics before the army overthrew the monarchy in 1952. Since the rules exclude a candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition group, analysts say that Mubarak is bound to win in the voting on Sept. 7.
Civil society groups and the United States have not persuaded the authorities to let observers monitor the voting to prevent the kind of abuses that have marred previous polls. But one of the biggest obstacles to a hotly contested election, sociologists say, is widespread suspicion of politics, seen as dangerous territory after half a century of authoritarian rule by men from military backgrounds.
“Nobody knows anything about the elections and most people don’t have any desire to say yes or no. Some people are afraid of change and think better the devil you know,” said Nadia Gamal Mabrouk, 18, a student at Benha in the Nile Delta. “I don’t really know anything about the other candidates... We are used to Mubarak and I will vote for him of course,” said Mohamed Mahmoud, a 25-year-old accountant.
Dream TV, a private channel in which state television has a stake, ran its own massive advertisements in newspapers to publicize its exclusive rights to air Mubarak’s speech. Casual readers might have mistaken them for pro-Mubarak messages. Egyptian state radio and television, the main source of news to many of the country’s 70 million people, have promised to be scrupulously neutral in their coverage of the campaigning.
The president’s campaign team, Lamees Al-Hadidi who is the bureau chief for CNBC Arabia and executive editor in chief for the daily newspaper, Al-Alam Al-Yawm said she is sure of the victory of the president but her main objective is to ultimately facilitate easy access, two-way flow of information between the media and the ruling party. She and her team will be available to answer people’s questions and requests besides answering the media attacks.
The campaign is also used to change the image of the ruling National Democratic Party, which began a makeover nearly four years ago to brand itself as Egypt’s leading reformist institution. Like its recently inaugurated annual conferences and the decision soon after the president’s speech to establish a campaign headquarters, the NDP is keen to show the world that it is a party like any other in a democratic country.
“It’s part of the party’s strategy for the campaign,” explained Abdel Moneim Saied, a member of the NDP’s Higher Policies Committee and political scientist who heads Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. “He’s presenting himself as a man from the countryside. He’s giving himself the image of a man outside the Cairo political elite-a doer not a talker.”
