Voters Optimistic At Egypt’s Wafd Party Elections Despite Internal Rift

Hundreds of Wafd Party members flocked to the party’s Cairo headquarters on Friday to cast their ballots in internal elections, amid an ongoing rift between the party head and prominent members.

The rift began earlier this month when at least 1,200 members of the right-of-centre party met in the Nile Delta governorate of Sharqiya, announcing that they were withdrawing their confidence in party head El-Sayed El-Badawi.

El-Badawi responded on the same day, suspending the membership of eight prominent members of the party’s high board.

President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi himself intervened in the conflict on Wednesday, calling on both factions to reconcile.

But despite El-Sisi’s call, the eight members and their supporters, who call themselves Wafd’s Reform Front, said they won’t rest until their demands are met.

At the high board elections on Friday there were no sign of the Reform Front. Instead, women ululated and members campaigned, handing out flyers supporting their favourite candidates.

Security was relaxed, with less than a dozen police personnel standing outside the party’s headquarters.

Guards from Falcon security company, who were according to some media reports hired to stop reformists from entering the headquarters, could be seen inside the complex rather than at the gate.

Volunteers were scanning voter cards and journalists’ IDs before allowing people to enter.

“It’s a fabricated crisis; it will be solved because President [El-Sisi] himself intervened in the problem,” a woman who travelled all the way from Beni Suef governorate to vote told Ahram Online.

“We chose the amicable solution; to sit together and eliminate the problem. El-Badawi and [member in the Reform Front Fouad] Badrawy are idols in the party and our role models.”

“God willing, there will be reconciliation,” she added.

“What you’re seeing now is not an election but a protest of love for the Wafd Party. Do you hear the ululating sounds? No one has won the elections yet, but everyone is so happy,” Mohamed Abdel-Aziz, head of the general Wafd Committee in Beni Suef, told Ahram Online.

Shaimaa, a voter from Suez governorate, told Ahram Online that “[the Reform Front] had agreements with El-Badawi and he always keeps his word.”

Holding the hands of her two children, Shaimaa described the Wafd as the “house of the nation,” adding that “we can have arguments but we always reconcile.”

But Sherif Taher, a member of the Reform Front and one of the eight who had their membership suspended, told Ahram Online by phone that the elections were “illegal and against the party’s bylaws.”

He added that the group had filed cases against the current procedures being taken by El-Badawi, including the high board elections.

Taher argues that the reformists have enough supporters that they cannot be ignored.

“Our numbers are high enough to have an influence to the point that the country’s president asked to sit with both sides for reconciliation,” he said.

But the influence of the Reform Front is not only a question of numbers; the dissidents include significant figures such as Fouad Badrawi, who ran against El-Badawi for the leadership of the party and lost by a mere 200 votes, as well as the party’s general-secretary, Abdel-Aziz El-Nahas. Both men, who were high board members, have had their board membership suspended.

Taher said that, in response to the president’s call, the Reform Front has not organised any protests or sit-ins in front of the party’s headquarters during the elections.

The front’s demands include restoring all those high board members sacked by El-Badawi because, according to Taher, they don’t agree with the party chief’s policies.

Taher said that at least 115 members have been sacked since 2013.

Another demand is to select members of the party’s general assembly by election; at present they are appointed by the leader. According to Taher, since El-Badawi’s election as party chief, he has removed 800 members from the general assembly, and appointed 1,200 new members.

The Wafd Party, Arabic for “delegation”, was established in 1918 as a mass movement to support an Egyptian delegation attending the 1919 Paris Peace Conference to demand the country’s right of self-determination and an end to British occupation.

The party has remained a fixture on Egypt’s political landscape ever since, at times representing the voice of large numbers and at others stagnant, with little political influence.

The party won just under 10 percent of the votes in the country’s 2011/2012 parliamentary elections.

Source : Ahram online