Egypt proving slow to reform despite promise, critics say

CAIRO -- As leaders of the world's developed countries prepare to take up a plan to encourage democracy in the Arab world, activists in Egypt say the government is retreating from its stated commitment to internal reform.

In the year following the US invasion of Iraq, the Egyptian government has pledged to open up the political process. Last September, the ruling National Democratic Party, or NDP, held its annual conference and presented a host of new policies in the area of health, economy, education, and women's rights. President Hosni Mubarak promised to begin a dialogue with opposition parties and overhaul legislation restricting civil society.

But nine months after that pledge, little has happened and any progress that had been made has been reversed in the past month, according to a number of observers. Egypt has declined an invitation to attend the Group of Eight summit this week in Georgia. At the gathering, the United States is expected to lay out its blueprint for encouraging political, economic, and social reform in the Arab and Muslim world.

''The sense of optimism that was felt in the country has just vanished and reversed," said Muhammad Sayyed Said, deputy director of the Cairo-based Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. ''Now it is back to despair over the issue of political reform."

In the past month, opposition parties broke off dialogue with the government, saying it was not serious about making changes, and they are now trying to promote their own reform agenda. The National Council of Human Rights, or NCHR, created by the government recently, changed its mind about recommending the cancellation of emergency law, in force since the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981. Some council members say the change of heart was made because of government pressure.

Recent elections for the Shura Council, the Parliament's upper house, ended without opposition parties taking a single seat. And in May, the government arrested dozens of members from the Muslim Brotherhood, the moderate Islamist group that is the country's largest opposition force.

A government spokesman, Taha Abdel Aleem, denied that any backtracking on reform has occurred. But he acknowledged that events in the region have slowed the usual pace of reform a bit: ''The initiative for the greater Middle East, the call for accelerated reform in the region, what happened in Iraq, and what happened in Palestine have pulled our attention to external regional and international issues. I do think in the next months we will focus again on internal issues, including the dialogue between parties."

Against this backdrop, Egyptians are pushing for change. The stagnant economy, combined with rising prices, has left more people eager for overhaul of the political system. Many observers say the government's turning point on reform occurred around mid-April, when Mubarak visited the United States and met with President Bush. In the meeting, Mubarak said reform was at the core of his country's policies, but afterward he began emphasizing the need for gradual rather than swift change, or chaos could ensue.

Some analysts say Washington played down the reform issue in return for Egypt's greater cooperation in the Mideast peace process.

One pillar of the Egyptian reforms was supposed to be the dialogue between the government and the political parties over new legislation governing elections. The ruling party holds more than 85 percent of the seats in Parliament, and elections are often described as flawed because of government interference and restrictions on political activity. The dialogue began in November with ruling party officials meeting with leaders of opposition parties.

But according to Hussein Abdel Razeq, secretary general of the leftist Tagammu Party, the conversations did not move beyond the possible agenda for a dialogue. ''We have had no further contact from the ruling party, so there is no dialogue," he said.

Instead, the three main legal opposition parties -- the liberal Wafd, the Tagammu, and the Nasserists -- have decided to issue a joint platform calling for the rotation of power, freer elections, and the easing of restrictions on political parties and their activities.

The biggest obstacle to reform and greater political participation is widely seen to be the state of emergency that Egypt has been under during Mubarak's 22-year reign. Emergency law restricts political activities and gives security forces extraordinary powers to detain and interrogate citizens.

It came as a great shock in early April when the state-owned newspaper Al Ahram quoted Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former United Nations secretary general and now president of the NCHR, as saying his group would recommend the law's cancellation. The announcement was supposed to be made May 1. But two days before, the council voted 25 to 3 to postpone its recommendation, saying the issue needed more study.

One of the three members of the council who thought the recommendation should have been made was Bahey Eddin Hassan, of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights, who said the sudden change of heart was no accident: ''I guess this is probably because of government pressure."

According to opposition figures, the government asked committee members to postpone their decision. But Kamal Aboul Magd, the council's vice president, said the issue needed more time.

One threat would be the arrests on May 16 of 54 members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood on charges that they tried to overthrow the state. Although the Brotherhood says it is an entirely political organization seeking change through peaceful means, the state says otherwise and won't allow it to form a political party.