Exceptional post

I usually never write about what the hell is going out around the world. That does not really mean that I have no idea, but I just leave the comments to the people who actually knows more about that. However, I think I'll do an exception and just draw the readers' attention to just one question.

The actual President of the Arab Republic of Egypt is Hosni Mubarak (82), Chairman of the National Democratic Party (NDP), who has been "guiding" the country for about 29 years. During all these period, his governament has introduced some changes to the egyptian economy (mainly n the last ten years) but the country has still massive social deficiences as well as high levels of unemployment and corruption. It's said that Mr. Mubarak's health status is really bad and actually he underwent surgery last year. Since some years, his youngest son Gamal Mubarak, has been taking part in his politics and some analysts think that he will be the next President.

Now; there a lot of questions which could be explained about this governament but I'm just going to focus on one point. His goverament has been qualified as highly corrupted and the Emergency Law rule has been applied since Sadat assassination in 1981. That means that anyone can be imprisioned for virtually no reason and so the personal rights have been, since then highly questioned. However, Egyptian press freedom has been (until now) one of the best points in its political life. I am saying "until now" because from November onwards various measures have been promulgated to either avoid the spread political information which might have gone against the NDP politics, to avoid the opposition to use the public media or to silence the critics with Mubarak's politics and governament.

Last week the Arab Republic of Egypt saw the first round of the Parlamentary Elections (tomorrow will be the second round). One could actually guess who won it and wouldn't be wrong if the first thought was NDP with Mr Mubarak at its front. And so it was, NDP won more than 90% of the seats and the opposition holds less than 10% (the last 5 years they had 24% of the seats) leaving the international society quite puzzled not for the results but for the why they have achieved them (from interfering the votion to vote-buying and imprisionment some of opposition leaders). It is interesting, though to note that one of the objectives of NDP for these elections was to show to the international society that they could win fair and clean elections without any oppression onto either the opposition or the people. That would place qualify them as a secular and legal and so confronted to the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

Does it seem that NDP has no real opposition? Well, actually it does but that does not really mean that they have threaten or even shed a fair shadow to the "main" party. Since this elections were called some months ago, one figure started rising as a possible unifier of the opposition parties, Mohamed ElBaradai. In contrast to the other opposition leaders, Mr ElBaraday is a former chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency and using his international renown, he started to campaing for the boycott of the elections to force a change in the actual governament. However, at the end, he failed in unifying the opposition since the Muslim Brotherhood and Wafd decided not to boycott the elections. And so the NDP was left with virtually no oppositors. It is probably that NDP induced these two parties to vote against the boycott; a thought that does not seem really out of track if checking the previous elections.

Not being an expert on that topic, I would say that NDP would have won the elections even with the boycott lead by ElBaradai. Probably they wouldn't have hold the 90% of the seats, though. The difference between holding the 75% from the last electoral period to this ridiculous amount of seats mean is actually that this "new" governament can do and undo at will. Actually is what they have been doing since they got the power. What they (and no-one) actually knows is how the population will react to this result and to that non-legitim governament.

So at the end it seems that things will remain the same; a party holding about the vast majority of the parlamentary seats and some critic voices. Voices which will be heard as long as they are not really critic and not become a real threat to the status quo where the Egypt governament is placed since Mr Mubarak became President.

I just cross fingers and hope that next time the opposition will be able to really organize themselves behind a real leader (and leaving aside their obvious differences) and so be able to make a change and guide this magnific country to a real democratic one. They have 5 years to work and there is no time to lose.