9 senior figures dismissed from Wafd Party in purge of opposition faction

Nine senior members of the Wafd Party were summarily dismissed from the party on Tuesday, ridding the liberal party of a faction that has increasingly challenged the leadership of the party’s chair and grown critical of the majority-holding Nation’s Future Party in the newly elected House of Representatives. 

Among those purged were senior party members who actively opposed Wafd Party Chair Bahaa Eddin Abu Shaqa’s cooperation with the Nation's Future Party in 2020’s bicameral elections. 

After his expulsion from the party, MP Abd Elaleem Dawood, who is also facing disciplinary action in the House for accusing Nation’s Future of corruption, told Mada Masr on Wednesday that the move to disenfranchise him and the other party senior members is not an expression of party members’ will, but is more likely intended to satisfy “those who gave [Abu Shaqa] the orders.”

Besides Dawood, all those dismissed were members of the Wafd Party’s High Council, and include Party Deputy Chair Hussein Mansour, Senator and party Deputy Chair Yasser al-Hodaiby, and Mohamed Abdo, all of whom were key figures during a short-lived attempt to unseat Abu Shaqa in October due to dissatisfaction with his management of the party’s electoral strategy and his cooperation with the Nation’s Future Party. Nabil Abdallah, Hamdan al-Khalily, Hatem Raslan and Mohamed Helmy Swailam were all dismissed as well. 

Last Saturday the Cairo party committee met to revive mobilization against Abo Shaqa’s leadership, pushing for an investigation into Abu Shaqa’s management of the party’s finances and dismal results in the parliamentary elections last year.

In a press conference on Tuesday, Abu Shaqa announced the dismissal decision and the appointment of Soliman Wahdan to replace Dawood as the leader of Wafd’s parliamentary bloc. Justifying the move, Abu Shaqa described the purge as a necessary step to protect the party from “dangers.” “There are preparations and plans for conspiracy using all the tools of fourth-generation social media warfare and money from unknown sources that is being spent to spread rumors,” Abu Shaqa said in the presser. Shortly after the announcement, Wahdan stepped up in support, describing the expelled members as plotters seeking to “Muslim Brotherhood-ize” the Wafd Party. 

According to Dawood, who posted on social media on Tuesday evening, the “plot” involved Abu Shaqa putting the party headquarters under siege in the last few days using bodyguards he claimed Abu Shaqa had sent to guard the party headquarters and prevent members who opposed the move from entering. 

Commenting to Mada Masr on the decision, Dawood described it as “baseless” and “an act of political thuggery,” adding that the party’s bylaws do not grant authority to the chair to unilaterally suspend members of the party’s high council.

Hussein Mansour, a member of the high council who was chosen as interim chair of the party at the height of opposition to Abu Shaqa in October, likewise argued that Abu Shaqa does not have the power to expel members of the council nor to make unilateral decisions regarding elections, assailing Abu Shaqa as a “servant to authority,” and pointing to the Nation’s Future Party.

For his part, Hodaiby has pledged to file a lawsuit against his dismissal and to sue Abu Shaqa for slander and defamation. Refuting the claims of affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, Hodaiby pointed to his roles as spokesperson and as deputy chair for the Wafd, and his former membership in the Mubarak-era ruling party, the National Democratic Party.

For Dawood, expulsion from the party adds to the pressure he already faces from potential action against him by the disciplinary committee in the House. Dawood made headlines in January at the outset of the newly elected House session by accusing the majority-holding Nation's Future Party of corruption, referring to it as “the party of the cartons” in a gesture toward a well-documented electoral ploy of mobilizing voters from low-income areas by distributing food cartons in exchange for votes. He was promptly referred to disciplinary action within the House, though days after the incident Dawood was nevertheless appointed to lead the 25-member bloc of seat-holding Wafd Party members in the House.

Dawood told Mada Masr on Wednesday that he hasn’t ruled out the possibility that he could be expelled from Parliament as well. “I expect the worst,” added Dawood while arguing that both the Constitution and the House of Representatives’ bylaws are on his side. 

After expulsion from the Wafd Party, Dawood and Hodaiby are vulnerable to losing their seats under Article 6 of the 2014 House of Representatives Law, which stipulates that lawmakers who “alter” or “lose” their affiliation after they are sworn in can have their membership invalidated by a two-third majority vote in the House or Senate respectively, or otherwise by a challenge in the Court of Cassation.

Commenting on the prospects of his expulsion to Mada Masr, Dawood maintained that the regulations, the Constitution, and precedent are on his and Hodaiby’s side, since he claimed the stipulation applies primarily to voluntary changes in affiliation rather than forcible expulsion.

In remarks to Cairo24, MP Ali Badr Amin, the secretary of the House Constitutional and Legislative Committee, echoed Dawood’s reasoning and stated that dismissal from the Parliament is contingent on the member deciding to disaffiliate, suggesting it would not apply to Dawood since it was the party who decided to expel him. 

In September and October 2020, the Wafd Party was shaken as members mobilized in coordination with the High Council against the almost three-year leadership of Abu Shaqa, after he failed to secure the promised quota of seats for his party on electoral lists put forward for both the Senate and the House of Representatives elections by the Nation’s Future Party. In place of the 40 nominees Abu Shaqa pledged for the party on the Nation’s Future-led electoral lists for the House elections in the fall, the Wafd was ultimately given just 21 names, including Abu Shaqa’s daughter and excluding the majority of the nominees picked by the party’s high council. 

Dissatisfied with the outcome, the High Council announced that it would withdraw its candidates from the lists and filed a request to do so with the National Elections Authority: a request which the NEA ultimately rejected on grounds that the registered legal council for the list itself is the only party entitled to do so. The Wafd also failed to win any of the individual seats it contested in the Senate elections. 

Earlier in October amid growing internal opposition, Abu Shaqa had announced that he would submit his resignation as party head effective October 17, when he said he would set early party leadership elections in motion. Mohamed Abdo, who was dismissed in the Tuesday decision, was briefly elected as an alternative party head. Yet, on the same day, the press learned that Abu Shaqa was listed among 100 public figures being appointed to the Senate by the president, and Abu Shaqa delayed promised leadership elections.

After reversing course, members of the High Council moved to instate an interim leader in the figure of Hussein Mansour, and set a tentative date for new leadership elections in December, though the elections never took place. 

Tuesday’s dismissals are the latest move by Abu Shaqa to strong-arm opposition figures out of the party. Four members of the Wafd Party youth were briefly arrested in October, with sources telling Mada Masr at the time that the four detainees were neither interrogated nor charged, but told they would be released from the station on condition that they resign from the party.

Several local branches issued statements rejecting Abu Shaqa’s decision as an overreach beyond the Party’s bylaws, including the branches of Mahalla al-Kobra in Gharbiya and Daqahlia.