NSF looks for stances, and purpose

The fate, and purpose, of the umbrella group that formed the political backbone to the popular movement against deposed President Mohamed Morsi seems unclear.

Parties of the National Salvation Front met Sunday at the headquarters of the Wafd Party, one of Egypt’s oldest legal opposition parties, where, according to spokesperson Wahid Abdel Meguid, they agreed on the necessity of continuing the alliance amid a strategy meeting.

The three top leaders of the group, Mohamed ElBaradei, Hamdeen Sabbahi, and Amr Moussa, were not in attendance, but their absence was addressed by Abdel Meguid directly.

The three men have charted different political paths since Morsi’s deposal. ElBaradei was appointed vice president, but left Egypt after resigning in the wake of massive state violence. His own Dostour Party is wracked with generational conflicts. Moussa, a former presidential candidate and founder of the Conference Party, said he would support Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s candidacy. Sabbahi is undecided on whether or not he will run for president, but he told Al-Hayat in January that he would run whether the defense minister does or not.

In light of these splits it is hard to imagine the NSF staying together cohesively or selecting someone from their own ranks to unite behind, said Mokhtar Awad, a researcher at the Center for American progress.

“It’s unlikely that if that scenario plays out they’ll be loyal to Hamdeen Sabbahi,” he said. “These are people on completely different wavelengths, their ambitions are going to get the best of them.”

Abdel Meguid told the television program Al-Hadath Al-Masry that the group does not support any particular candidate for the presidency. In the same phone-in, he said that the party’s role has moved to nation-building and confronting terrorism.

Abdel Meguid said the front would be a political, and not an electoral alliance. With the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party out of the picture, and the Salafi Nour Party’s base divided on whether it should support the party, the groups have little to gain from collaborating, and their goals are short of united.

State-run daily newspaper Al-Ahram cited anonymous sources inside the front saying that the Egyptian Democratic Party and the Popular Socialist Alliance were opposed to the continuation of the front.

In the absence of a strong coalition in the form of the NSF, there’s going to have to be some coalition building ahead of parliamentary elections, Awad said.

“Its not really clear what kind of support these people can leverage on their own. A lot of these are new parties, born in the aftermath of Morsi’s presidency, but they don’t really have anything on the ground,” he said. “It’s almost a badge of honor for some politicians to be an NDP type, because it means you had a history of competency, and name recognition. Who knows who the Conference Party is?”