Thursday's privately-owned and state-run newspapers focus largely on the post-election political dynamics within the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). Egypt's ruling party swept the first round and run-off polls, winning 473 of 508 seats. Opposition parties secured merely 14 seats–five for the leftist Tagammu Party and six for the liberal Wafd Party.
State-owned daily Al-Ahram focuses on the upcoming NDP committee meeting scheduled for Sunday. The publication says Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak along with victorious NDP candidates will preside over the meeting.
NDP Secretary General Safwat al-Sherif says the new MPs are highly qualified since 68% of them hold Bachelor's degrees. Among those, 46 also hold PhDs and 13 hold Masters degrees, according to Al-Ahram.
In other news, state-owned Al-Akhbar highlights details of NDP plans to implement new legislation to administer state-owned land usage. Experts consider the move a ploy to avoid a recent court ruling obliging the government to scrap the direct sale of state land for the Talaat Moustafa Group's (TMG) Madinaty land project.
TMG's US$3 billion Madinaty project has been mired in a legal row since a court said the property must be sold by auction, sparking concern among investors that other state land sales may be challenged.
The government's answer was to scrap the original contract and return the land to TMG, Egypt's largest known developer, under a new deal with the same terms, based on its right to act in the national interest.
However, Al-Wafd daily, published by the Wafd Party, chose to concentrate on NDP internal discord. The paper alleges the existence of a battle currently waging between the party's youth and its entrenched cadres over the speaker of the house position.
Ahmad Fathi Sorour has occupied the position since 1991. According to Al-Wafd, Mubarak prefers Sorour. However, the president's son Gamal Mubarak, General Secretary of the Policy Committee, and Ahmed Ezz, NDP secretary for organizational affairs, favor appointing current Minister of Legal Affairs and Parliamentary Councils Mofid Shehab.
In other developments, privately-owned Al-Shorouk’s headline notes recent reactions by the technically illegal but generally tolerated Muslim Brotherhood. The paper said Brotherhood members are preparing documents for submission to the Supreme Constitutional Court, Egypt's highest court, in order to obtain a ruling declaring the election process unconstitutional.
The Muslim Brotherhood won a fifth of parliamentary seats in the 2005 parliamentary elections but garnered only one seat in 2010. The group joined Wafd in boycotting the run-off elections, citing a lack of fraud guarantees.
A coalition of rights groups that monitored the vote urged the dissolution of the new parliament after Egypt's High Administrative Court–whose verdicts cannot be appealed–criticized the polling process.
The chief editor of state-run Al-Akhbar, Mohammed Barakat, writes that the elections were free and fair.
"On the top of these positive aspects [of the polls] is the absence of the banned group [the Muslim Brotherhood] from the parliament and its candidates’ failure in gaining voters’ trust," Barakat posited.
In other news, Thursday's newspapers touch on developments relating to the recent wave of Sharm al-Sheikh shark attacks.
Last week, sharks mauled three Russians and one Ukrainian. One Russian woman lost her hand and another lost a hand and leg. On Sunday, a shark tore the arm off a 70-year-old German tourist while she was snorkeling. She died almost instantly.
On Monday, authorities closed approximately 50km of Sharm al-Sheikh’s beaches to swimmers and divers.
Al-Ahram on Thursday reported that, after easing restrictions for swimmers and divers, tourists filled beaches once more and Sharm al-Sheikh's tourists refused to alter their planned vacations.
The paper added that the Egyptian stock market tourism index rose by 620 points. The rise indicated, according to Al-Ahram, that tourism remained unaffected by the attacks.
Egypt's papers:
Al-Ahram: Daily, state-run, largest distribution in Egypt
Al-Akhbar: Daily, state-run, second to Al-Ahram in institutional size
Al-Gomhorriya: Daily, state-run
Rose al-Youssef: Daily, state-run, close to the National Democratic Party's Policies Secretariat
Al-Dostour: Daily, privately owned
Al-Shorouk: Daily, privately owned
Al-Wafd: Daily, published by the liberal Wafd Party
Al-Arabi: Weekly, published by the Arab Nasserist party
Youm7: Weekly, privately owned
Sawt al-Umma: Weekly, privately owned
