Gamal Mubarak Speaks

Gamal Mubarak and several senior National Democratic Party officials invited me along with a dozen or so other foreign journalists to the NDP's HQ on the eve of the constitutional referendum. Their bottom line message: the 34 proposed constitutional amendments are a milestone on the road to political reform, though more needs to be accomplished. They stressed their view that this is a serious referendum based on two years of planning and debate, not a sham vote as critics have charged. Perhaps in response to the domestic and international criticism, party officials passed out a press release that I later found on the NDP's English website, entitled "How The Amendments Promote Democracy." [On Sunday, President Mubarak addressed the nation and repeated that the amendments were a major step toward democracy.]

The NDP officials gave us a look at their "war room;" the center of the party's "get out the vote" effort, it is a conference hall filled with banks of telephones where rows of party workers are keeping tabs on the poll situation across the country through direct contacts with local party officials.

For his part, Gamal Mubarak took us through the steps leading to the referendum, beginning with the President's re-election announcement in July 2005 when he laid out a program for political reform. "If we manage to get the yes vote we worked for tomorrow, this will constitute a very important milestone in our reform process, political reform in particular," Mubarak said.

He added: "We are aware of the criticism and the skeptics out there. We are aware of the views that have been put forth by different political forces, opposition forces whether in parliament or outside the parliament... We are delivering on our campaign promises. We have a lot of indications, and we have a lot to show, that we are delivering on what we promised. Obviously we are facing some challenges, we are facing some setbacks in certain areas. In some spec areas, we hoped to achieve results quicker."

Mubarak said he was referring to the fact that the results of economic reforms take time to trickle down, but he then acknowledged shortcomings in political reform as well.

He said: "Democracy is an evolving process, you know that. And I think we are moving in the right direction. As I said, we might be moving slower than people expect. We might be moving slower than actually we expect. But what is important for us is we are moving in the right direction. Achieving progress, moving from one milestone to the other... You are right. We still have a way to go. So if you get a [referendum] turnout of 20, 25, 30 percent and you say, 'What is the point of having that?,' that's not the kind of attitude that we take. We think we are achieving progress and we think we are moving in the right direction and we know we still have a way to go. We strongly believe that if this package goes forward tomorrow, this is going to be a very important milestone towards further steps in political reform."

Here is what Mubarak said responding to specific criticisms:

PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO ARTICLE 88 UNDERMINES EGYPTIAN ELECTIONS BY REMOVING JUDICIAL OVERSIGHT:

"If you compare it to the existing article, it does have much more detail, much more guarantees, much more specifics on how the process of running elections and supervising the elections should be. It does relegate to the power of the legislation to set up more details. But it does enshrine very important guarantees and very important responsibilities for the judiciary within the new drafting of the article. The drafting that we have does provide guarantees that are not in the existing article."

PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO ARTICLE 179 ENSHRINES DRACONIAN EMERGENCY LAW POWERS INTO THE CONSTITUTION:

"This is not something unique to Egypt. All countries, especially in the past four or five years, that have went forward to try to put legislation to deal with terrorism, had always had to draw a very fine line, a balance, between powers to combat terrorism and between not infringing civil liberties. Go back and we have seen and we have followed the discussion in each and every country... We believe that this article... offers guarantees and will offer judicial supervision on any powers being given to the authorities to combat terrorism."

PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO ARTICLE 5 RESTRICTS POLITICAL ACTIVITY BY BARRING RELIGION-BASED PARTIES:

"There is nothing new in that language. This language of prohibiting the formation of political parties based on religion is and has been for a very, very long time enshrined in our legislation. This goes back in our political discourse years and years and years and years back. We never had that notion. What the President had in mind is to elevate that principle, that very important enshrined principle in our political system from a long time ago, into the constitution."

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo