Tag: mubarak

From AFP:

Despite a highly marketed effort at modernization, Egypt’s ruling party is still centered on one man and draws much of its loyalty from its function as a patronage machine, analysts say.
A stylish image revamp and the emergence of a reform-minded camp in the last five years have done little more than add gloss to the National Democratic Party whose founding members still call the shots.
“At the leadership level there really isn’t much of an internal debate,” Issandr El Amrani, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, told AFP.
During its ninth general congress which wrapped up on Tuesday, 5,310 members elected President Hosni Mubarak chairman of the party in an uncontested vote that was cast and counted in less than two hours. Party Secretary General Safwat Al-Sherif was re-elected to his post at Mubarak’s suggestion.
The party has maintained its pyramid structure since its establishment in 1978. The NDP, a re-incarnation of the Arab Socialist Union, the ruling state party created by President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1962, has never strayed too far from the one-party model, Amrani said.
“It isn’t as old-fashioned as the ASU but provides the same services, it’s a patronage machine,” Amrani said.