Fighting for Tomorrow

According to Zeinobia over at Egyptian Chronicles, Ayman El-Kholi has won his fight to be head of the Al Ghad (tomorrow)party, beating out NDP apologist Moussa Mustafa Moussa. Although Al Ghad is the most prominent opposition party in the country, I haven't really heard much news about this in any of the Dailies. This is probably due to the perceived insignificance of any of the legally recognized parties. (I think the success of the otherwise poorly organized Kifeya was somewhat attributable to the fact that nobody had faith in opposition parties to achieve anything.) The very fact that the administrative court (government) made the final decision on a who would take the helm really shows how thoroughly the NDP has managed to control the rules of the game.

I don't think however that we should completely discount the potential significance of Al Ghad. It would be nice after all to have some organizations besides the Muslim Brotherhood that offered up their own policy agenda every now and then. One of the problems with the current state of the liberal opposition in Egypt is that it really doesn't go beyond criticizing the NDP. That's not to say they offer no substance, but the Facebook phenomenon and Kifeya were really just loosely held together, ad-hoc movements that had a unifying grievance. This is great for putting pressure on Mubarak, but more has to be done if there is any hope of replacing him with something better.

Update: On a not so serious note, I really wish the party hadn't used the name "Ghad" which is the more classical word for tomorrow, as it sounds similar to the Egytpian food chain "Gad." To Egyptian's I'm sure there is no confusion, but with my non-fluent Arabic I can't help but be reminded of hummus when I hear about Al Ghad. I suppose using the Egyptian word for tomorrow "Bukra" might be associated with simply putting something off for tomorrow because it can't be done today. That's usually the context in which I hear the word. Of course it would also be an accurate description of real reform in Egypt, but they probably don't want to admit that.