The Bread and Freedom Party: A leftist opposition party in post-coup Egypt
 
 
Courtesy: Mohamed El Raai - Photograph: محمد الراعي
 

On April 22, 2019, Abir al-Safty, a 24-year-old political activist and journalist, was arrested for the second time in less than three years. ٍShe was arrested amid the vote for a constitutional amendment that would allow President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to remain in office until 2030. Abir was on her way to her Nile Delta hometown of Kafr al-Dawar for an official check-in as part of the parole conditions for a previous case in which she faced a variety of charges after her arrest for protesting increased metro fares in 2018. Police officers pulled over the minibus she was riding from Cairo, asked the passengers for their IDs and ushered them to a nearby polling station to vote — the regime wanted a large turnout. When the police checked her ID, she was escorted away from the bus. She was detained for a year.

Safty was only released in March 2020, after the renewals of her detention finally ceased. She still faces charges for violating her parole, which prohibited her from traveling outside of Alexandria. Apart from Safty, there are currently nine members of the leftist Bread and Freedom Party who are detained on various charges, and thousands of other political activists now jailed in Egypt over the past few years, during what has been described as the most repressive period in the country’s modern history.

Sitting in a cafe close to the party headquarters in downtown Cairo, Safty’s friend and fellow Bread and Freedom member Asmaa Abdel Hamid says it’s been increasingly difficult to organize. Sometimes, she says, she is advised not to attend events at the party headquarters for fear she would be arrested, as she is also out on conditional release pending investigation in the same protest case as Abir.

The relatively young party emerged on the eve of the formation of Sisi’s government, but it did not particularly anticipate the severity of the ongoing clampdown on politics. The moment forced the party to make an important decision: Sensing a new authoritarianism was being instituted, the nascent party recognized there was a need to entrench itself against a hostile storm forming on the horizon if it were to resume public activism, and it was cognizant of the repercussions of making that choice. 

As the state’s violent encroachment on political spaces began to take hold, the party faced another challenge, which was to continue to push forward what party members viewed as a progressive agenda, sometimes on relatively untred grounds, which exposed it to an additional source of pressure: a society where many are opposed to the party’s views, such as its non-belligerent positions in the Ethiopian dam crisis, or its views on personal freedoms for people of all genders and sexual orientations, including within leftist circles conventionally seen as the party’s backers.

A time like this 

Egyptian political parties don’t have a good rap. Despite the explosion of party formation after the 2011 revolution, replacing the Mubarak-era parties that were widely viewed as parodies of the real thing, it wasn’t long after the 2013 military takeover of Egypt’s rule that many parties were either outlawed — the Islamist ones — or unofficially frozen by intimidation, arrests of members and refusal to legalize, as is the case with the Bread and Freedom Party. 

But the Bread and Freedom Party is representative of something different than most post-2011 parties, in that it materialized not amid the three years of unprecedented political freedom wrested open by the uprising, but after that opening had already begun to close — after it had become clear that the de facto political leadership had become intolerant of any independent political motivation.

After the ouster of Mohamed Morsi from power following mass protests in June 2013, some leftist and liberal forces aligned themselves with the new regime, most visibly during Sisi’s television address wherein he was flanked by liberal and leftist leaders like Mohamed ElBaradei and Hamdeen Sabahi.

Founding Bread and Freedom member Elham Eidarous says the party formed around the explicit rejection of this approach — of becoming a sort of “wise advisor” to the new rulers  — taken by the Popular Socialist Alliance Party, the first and largest socialist party to be formed after 2011. The partisans chose instead to become, without ambiguity, the democratic opposition to the new administration. This moment, seen by some as a splintering of the wider leftist umbrella of the Socialist Popular Alliance, would birth the Bread and Freedom Party, Eidarous explains. “The party is the child of this terrible stage.”

Rasha Azab, a long time leftist political activist, who has worked with several socialist parties but never joined one, observed the formation of the Bread and Freedom Party, and understands the need it had to shed the problems of the Popular Alliance. In her view, the Alliance was led mainly by men, who were the product of political organizations formed during the Nasserist era, one of which was the infamous Vanguard Organization close to the Nasser regime, and later on the Tagammu Party, and both had an outdated worldview and a rigid leadership-centered approach that was not in line with the tumult that was the January 25 revolution.

However, despite the need for a new left party, Azab says it was extremely unlucky for the party to form at such an inopportune time, “during the formation of a storm” about to devastate independent politics, as she put it. And a perilous storm it was, if you’re politically active; if you scroll down the Bread and Freedom party’s Facebook page, its principle means of public communication, you find that posts about incarcerated members dominate its timeline.

Sitting with founding party member Akram Ismail in his house, he tells me he remembers distinctly when the crackdown started. “It was in May 2017, during the uproar about the fate of the Red Sea islands, when an organized campaign against party cadres started.” The group’s well-known co-founder and former leader, Khaled Ali, was also leading the legal case against giving Saudi Arabia control over the Tiran and Sanafir Islands. There were party members incarcerated as early as 2014, he says, but that the deliberate targeting of Bread and Freedom occurred when they started calling for protests. “Security wasn’t even aware of us before,” Akram says. “We were mainly focused on organizing seminars, doing our work in neighborhoods, even issuing scathing political statements, but we hadn’t called for protests before that.” 

It was then that the party’s profile began to rise, Ismail said. The party had previously been relegated to the margins as a group connected to Ali.  After the Supreme Administrative Court ruled in favor of islands being Egyptian territory — a ruling overturned later by the Supreme Constitutional Court — Ali held a press conference at the party’s headquarters commenting on the legal victory. It was then that it became clear things had changed, according to Ismail. It was at this point, he says, that the party’s project came into the limelight, when it started being evident that the party could attract a special constituency, especially among progressive youth, and that it was effective in the initiatives it engaged in, like its role in supporting the Tiran and Sanafir case, or other initiatives that resonated with the party’s audience, such as working with the Doctors Syndicate to deliver medicine to Gaza following the Israeli bombing of Gaza in 2014.

To Ismail, a party should engage with what it believes in, regardless of the consequences. “This was what was asked of us by some when we engaged with the two islands issue with Saudi Arabia. Some saw it as a nationalist, populist case and asked us why we’re engaging with it. Our business is politics, not theorization. This issue hit the regime’s legitimacy at its core. We chose our way of dealing with it: We rejected the patriarchal slogan that likened land to a woman’s honor which we must defend. We chose to push the slogan ‘Egypt is not for sale.’” 

Although the Tiran and Sanafir affair put the party in the regime’s crosshairs, with terrible consequences for its members, there was no hesitation, says Ismail: “We can’t withdraw from issues just because they anger the regime.”

Acting like a party

Last October, elections for the second parliament since Sisi took office kicked off amid a familiar atmosphere: orchestration of the electoral process by security agencies — including intimidation and screening of candidates — scant presence of independent candidates, and widespread vote buying.

Despite the continuation of repression of independent politics, with virtually no chance for liberal and socialist parties to campaign effectively, let alone secure any seats, several independent democratic political parties decided to take part in the elections, supporting over a dozen candidates but not necessarily fielding their own. The Bread and Freedom Party was among them, and were not spared criticism from those who believe that partaking in elections in such a restrictive political context only gives it legitimacy.

Salma Shash, a member of the party who took an active part in the parliamentary elections, summarizes many of the party members’ disposition: “I love elections.”

For Shash and others in the party who argued in favor of participating in the elections, the position adopted by the party leadership in the end, it presented a rare opportunity to engage with the public, however narrowly.

“There are no protests, there’s a ban on public activity, so the elections of any kind are a rare opportunity where a window is opened slightly for our members to connect with the people — not people who already know us, but the non-politicized ones,” Shash says.

Members coordinated support for candidates in Cairo, Port Said, Ismailia and Aswan from the party’s Cairo office, Shash tells me, and liaised with party activists in other regions to mobilize support for the candidates through the party’s existing network of supporters and through newer inroads, who would campaign with the candidates in their constituencies.

Despite the draconian measures against activism, there was no outright suppression of candidate campaigning, and the party took advantage of that to engage in what it sees as one of its principal activities: to present its political vision to the people. Even though none of the candidates supported by the party made it into the House, the election was an opportunity to work with some of the candidates on their programs, and draft others’ programs altogether in the framework of the issues the party takes up, and it was also an opportunity to gauge what issues the constituents cared about.

While this was the first parliamentary election the party participated in, there was a more formative moment that had come two years earlier, in another election.

At the headquarters of the liberal Constitution Party in 2017, against the backdrop of a blown-up photo of himself, hands spread out victoriously while propped up on the shoulders of revelers at the Supreme Administrative Court following the Tiran and Sanafir ruling, Khaled Ali announced his bid for the presidential elections of 2018.

As in other parties, decisions like this one — to field a candidate for president — are rarely unanimous, but it was decided, as it would be in 2020, that despite the draconian measures against political organization and the severe tilt in the balance of power toward Sisi, the elections presented a rare opportunity to do what parties do.

The task wasn’t an easy one. Campaigners had to gather 25,000 notarized endorsements for Ali, a condition many view as an obstacle against independent candidates running that required them to tap deep into their rather limited constituencies, just to be able to officially run.

A test case

A further hurdle to Ali’s candidacy simmering under the surface was an email making the rounds in late 2017 among one of the parties’ main constituencies during that time — members of progressive political and civil society groups — accusing Ali of sexual harassment. Accusations that the party was hushing up the claims began appearing on social media.

The email was sent by a woman who had previously worked with Ali at the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights. The incident opened the floodgates of a debate many felt was never properly reckoned with in the circles of Egyptian leftist and liberal groups and civil society: harassment within these groups and institutions, putting the party under attack from within its supposed base of support for allegedly dragging its feet in its investigation of the incident. Some people accused them of not taking action out of fear that Ali’s possible presidential bid could be damaged.

The party only responded to the email issue almost a month after the resignation, in a statement that critics argued was too concerned with explaining the delay in its response, raising tough questions about the party’s self-acclaimed feminist and progressive politics.

The party’s controversial investigation, launched in December 2017, cleared Ali of the charges of sexual misconduct, although he resigned from the party and made a public apology to the complainant. Ali also dropped out of the presidential race, which he said was the result of the arrest of another candidate, Mubarak-era army chief Samy Anan. The whole issue led to a series of discussions within the party and eventually to the party adopting a sexual harassment policy in March 2020. While this is seen by party members as a positive, albeit delayed, outcome, they do admit that it had caused them some losses in support. “During and after the investigation, many people resigned from the party. Some thought the party had succumbed to political blackmail, while others did not find the investigation impartial,” Eidarous told Mada Masr last year.

Azab, the independent leftist activist, views the email issue as the major hit to the party, and contends that the party’s poor handling of the investigation — not soliciting the victim’s participation in the investigation process or getting her approval for the investigating committee — had given many the impression the party had a preordained intention to clear their president of any wrongdoing, and many members and supporters left due to the lack of trust in the process, she said.

This juncture in the party’s history put it in a delicate position: a crossroads between the conventional political context, represented by the pressures of repression and electoral politics, and the more nuanced challenges of being a leftist party facing novel terrains at the heart of progressive politics. Ismail summarizes the party’s position succintly: “We were between Samir Sabry and the MeToo movement,” referring to a litigous pro-regime lawyer who filed a complaint calling for Ali to be tried for the sexual harrassment claims, and to the severe attack from feminist circles for delaying the investigation. 

During a moment of renewed conversation on sexual violence around the country last summer, the party issued a public statement reflecting on its response to the situation that acknowledged that the party’s actions following the allegations were not transparent and that it was slow in dealing with the incident, describing its previous 2018 statement as “muddled.”

While Eidarous is cognizant of the shortcomings of the party’s response to the issue, she nevertheless insists it’s a learning process, and a necessary part of growth. To her, there’s a base to build on, which explains why despite some losses, other feminist members did not quit. This type of engagement, however imperfect, with issues on the ground, is what it means to be members of a political party. Reality is full of contradictions, and a political party engages with them and tries to grow. For Ismail and Eidarous, confronting such challenges is what sets the party apart from other forms of political engagement.

Ismail contends there are complicated calculations to being a political party, often rooted in the fact that you’re not operating in a vacuum. He gives the example of the party’s reaction to the arrest of one of its members, Sarah Hegazy, for raising a rainbow flag at a concert.

In a country like Egypt, it’s not easy to issue a statement defending LGBTQ rights without thinking about the repercussions of that on your supporters, with whom you share other common causes. When the party posted Hegazy’s picture on Facebook, Eidarous says, some party members criticized the move, using homophobic language. On the other end, some were upset that the party did not immediately embark on a campaign calling for gay rights.

As a middle position, the group would defend a more general line of calling for personal freedoms, including freedom of sexual orientation, and decrying the state’s attacks on the LGBTQ community.

Raison d’être

“We’re not a promotional ring, or a Facebook page — we want to form roots in society, and exist in reality,” Ismail quips. 

But what happens when that difficult space you’re navigating begins contracting to the extent where you’re unable to carry out your functions? 

Setting out to do these interviews, I didn’t plan to avoid any party activities, as private as they have been forced to become. However, I was alarmed when a party member whom I didn’t interview in the end asked me to meet him at party headquarters in downtown Cairo. For months random stops and frisks by security agents were taking place there, and I couldn’t move around with my notes about the party without being wary.

I ended up meeting the rest in public places, mostly in safe areas. Those I met in crowded cafes, I’d noticed every once in a while that their voices would fade into whispers, and their eyes might briefly dart across the room.

The feeling of being watched is familiar. Ismail tells me despite his almost three decades in politics, this is the first time he had a real fear of being arrested, of being prevented seeing his son for several years, of having his few assets frozen or confiscated. He is wary of the impossibility of continuing as things are now, but at the same time he says it is impossible to shut down.

“We are stuck. How will we go on like this, enduring this extent of repression and the consequent price of people leaving the party, how will we grow? But at the same time, will we be able to dissolve the party? Any group still existing is evidence of resistance,” Ismail asserts.

He assures me that despite the crackdown, the party continues its activities. From its inception, the party had sought to expand its circle of influence outside its membership, by engaging with various issues via working groups that include non-member activists. According to Ismail, these are still ongoing — albeit often as webinars now, due to the pandemic — along with regular seminars on topics such as the recently explosive personal status law, or the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam crisis, or on Egypt’s environmental policies; the range of topics the party engages in is broad, Ismail insists, and doesn’t shy away from addressing topics traditionally unpopular with the left of the Global South, due to the salience such issues now have from the perspective of a new international left: women’s rights in marriage in the personal status law, the nationalist dimensions present in the dam issue and how to tackle them, or how the environment cannot be divorced from any political debate at this time in history.

While some forms of activism have become virtually non-existent, such as protests, for their high risk and limited benefit at a moment of mass fear of politics, at those rare opportunities such as elections, the party machine works. Even when there were limits to mass mobilization, committees were formed to support candidates in the typical ways: media campaigns, volunteer recruitment, contribution gathering, leafleting and lobbying for support.

One of Abdel Hamid’s reasons for staying in the party, despite her previous arrest and her parole, is because she feels the party is stubborn. “It defies the difficult circumstances.” 

As buoyant as this sounds, it’s not as if the political climate doesn’t affect the morale of the Bread and Freedom’s members. When I asked Shash why she keeps going on — why she isn’t demoralized, she laughs. Shash says many in the party get bouts of disillusion, and members occasionally discuss that most salient of questions: what are we supposed to do in these circumstances, given the difficulty of undertaking typical party work?

Azab, the leftist activist who does not engage in hierarchical political organizations herself, believes however that any collective work is valuable, especially at this special moment in Egypt’s history: “Any group that takes a political stance, that forms ideas about issues and defends them and engages with people, is important at such a time of unprecedented political repression — digging into a rock with a pin, when that is all you have, is still digging.”

Shash is focused on the overarching goal: “I strongly believe in collective action, and organized action. In my view, there is no other way for the political movement and discourse I care for, the new progressive left movement, to exist. For me, the ideal form of that organized action is through a party with a clear program and committees working on different issues. Not a movement, not a group that works on a certain cause or issue. If one day the political sphere opens up relative to how things are now, then we will have a presence. There is no other way but to build and have the long run in our crosshairs.”

Ismail is optimistic about a future political opening: “It may not happen, but I’m betting it will happen sooner or later, and our promising project will be rekindled. On the other hand, what if we kill it now, and an opening happens? In the second case, we would lose so much of what we already built.”

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Osman El Sharnoubi 
 
 

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