Seven months in, conflicts continue to hamper launch of National Dialogue political process

More prisoners need to be released before the Civil Democratic Movement — a coalition of socially liberal political groups and figures — will consent to participate in a state-sponsored political consultation process, said politician and former presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi at a presser this week. 

The National Dialogue, heralded by the president in April as a forum for political inclusivity to address key policy issues in the country, is already seven months in the making, with no date in sight for an official start.

Talks between participants assigned to establish an agenda and structure for the forum have progressed at a snail’s pace, while the Presidential Amnesty Committee, tasked at the outset of the path toward the National Dialogue with responsibility for securing the release of prisoners held in politicized cases, is perceived by many to have underperformed in its remit.

“We accepted the National Dialogue with guarantees, the first of which was the release of a significant number of prisoners of conscience,” said Sabbahi, who returned to the political scene after a years-long absence, in tandem with preparations for the dialogue. Speaking to journalists and CDM members assembled on Sunday, he laid down the movement’s bottom line: If no action is taken to ensure the release of a list of prisoners identified by the CDM, “the state has shut the door on dialogue.”

Agenda items for the forum’s politics branch were finalized in November and are set to include: a discussion on remand detention, the widespread use of which has earned Egypt censure from commentators and critics around the world; regulations on access to information; conditions within detention centers; the protection of witnesses and whistleblowers; freedom of expression; and discrimination. 

Yet determining the political agenda took weeks and was not without controversy. National Dialogue Board of Trustees member Amr Hashem Rabie noted that he was unable to secure a place for discussion around the assignment of members of the judiciary to non-judicial posts, such as the body that oversees national elections. Rabie told Mada Masr that around 500 judges currently hold secondary roles in non-judicial positions within bodies that have regulatory competencies, a structural loophole that he said compromises the independence and integrity of the judiciary.

One of the board members is affiliated with the judiciary and works with a non-judicial body, but they refused to enter into a discussion of the issue, lamented Rabie, who is also a member of the Civil Democratic Movement and the deputy director of Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

During the 14th and 15th coordinating sessions held over the past two weeks, the board has struggled in discussions lasting as long as eight hours toward reaching a definitive list of topics to feature on the bill of fare for the economic and social subdivisions of the forum. 

At this rate, said Rabie, the National Dialogue will not be launched in 2022. 

And even once established, it remains to be seen whether the dialogue will be able to muster the broad church of participants that it aimed ostensibly to host. 

The CDM announced on Sunday that it would make a final decision over the coming month regarding whether it will or will not take part in the dialogue, pending more prisoner releases. The jury is still out at present, said Sabbahi, as “the prisoners of conscience issue is not over yet."