Rumours of early Egyptian elections defy denials (Feature)

Cairo - At least five times in the past two weeks, Ahmed Fathi Surur, speaker of the Egyptian parliament, has denied rumours that the government will soon dissolve parliament and declare snap elections. Considering that the lower house of parliament was last dissolved in 1987 and that the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) already enjoys an unassailable majority of more than two-thirds of the assembly, the denials have left many in the Arab world's most populous nation asking 'why?'. No sooner had the government passed a law last month raising the number of seats in the lower house of parliament from 454 to 518 and mandating that the 64 additional seats be held by women, observers began assigning sinister motives to the move. Surely, opposition journalists reasoned, the government could not be doing something based merely on an enlightened concern for women's representation in government. It must have some other agenda. Journalists at the opposition daily al-Dustur cited anonymous government sources saying that the new quota would be used as a pretext to dissolve the current parliament and move elections, now scheduled for 2010, forward to August 2009. 'Rumours that the government will dissolve parliament have recently increased,' columnist Khaled al-Sirgani wrote in al-Dustur. 'It seems that high-ranking officials in the NDP are pushing for it, as part of a plan to enable (President Hosny Mubarak's son, Gamal,) the head of party's Policies Secretariat, to become the president quickly, and without problems.' 'I don't think that ordinary citizens need to be incredibly intelligent to realize that Gamal Mubarak is the candidate,' columnist Hassan Nafie echoed in the independent daily al-Masry al- Youm. 'They are convinced that all constitutional changes that took place throughout the past 10 years have been an effort to push us towards this,' Nafie wrote. According to this line of reasoning, dissolving the parliament would allow the government to rid the assembly of the opposition members - particularly candidates from the Muslim Brotherhood, who won 88 seats in the last elections, in 2005 - who might make an issue of an attempt to anoint the president's son as his successor. Speaker Surur has repeatedly brushed aside such speculation, saying similar rumours appear at the end of every parliamentary session. 'These days any one sitting in a cafe, smoking hashish and playing backgammon, and thinking he understands the law and wants to make a political movement, is talking about the parliament's being dissolved,' the opposition al-Wafd newspaper quoted him as saying. But in an interview with the government's flagship daily, al- Ahram, Surur seemed to tacitly admit that some in the NDP wanted to see early elections. 'It is not wrong that some people call for dissolving the parliament,' he said. 'Maybe they have certain objectives in their minds that would serve the public interest. But they should disclose them.' Such hints, combined with a widespread perception that Gamal Mubarak has been groomed to take over as president from his father at least since his appointment as head of the NDP's Policies Secretariat in 2002, have kept the rumours alive. So too did a report, published last month in the independent daily al-Shuruq, that senior members of the NDP were meeting to decide who the party's candidate would be in the 2011 presidential elections. Since its creation, the NDP has never fielded a candidate who was not the current president. Safwat al-Sharif, head of the NDP and Speaker of the upper house of parliament, swiftly denied al-Shuruq's report in an interview with its competitor, al-Masry al-Youm. 'The party does not need to search for a candidate,' al-Sharif said. 'The party enjoys stability under President Mubarak's leadership.' 'Why would any one make up stories about this?' he asked. 'The party is not going through any kind of crisis that would make it choose the 2011 candidate in 2009.' And yet, despite the denials, Cairo's opposition journalists and the 'backgammon players' continue to whisper that early elections are around the corner. In a matter of weeks, it will be clear whether there is any truth to their whispers.