Parties over: The demise of Egypt's opposition parties

Abstract

Heeding Eberhard Kienle's deliberalisation argument and Maye Kassem's work on legislative elections in Egypt, the article explores the government's tactics in causing fragmentation in Egypt's legalised political parties. In this vein, it extends both arguments applying them to opposition parties in Egypt. Since 1998, the Political Parties Committee (PPC) has closed seven of the sixteen legal opposition parties. The government is not only stifling group development, but also preventing prominent independent members of parliament (MPs) from using already existing parties to challenge the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). By examining the government's tactics towards opposition parties, this article shows that a re-entrenchment of authoritarianism has emerged, and argues that Egypt's democratisation process has ended.