At the first annual conference of Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), held in Cairo from September 26 to 28, President Hosni Mubarak and his son Gamal tried to give the impression that an end to autocratic rule in Egypt is at hand. Forty-year-old Gamal heads the NDP's influential policy secretariat and many believe he is being groomed to inherit his father's presidential seat. The NDP has dominated official politics since the 1970s. Now, facing international scrutiny and a nascent alliance of domestic liberal and Islamist opposition forces criticizing the prospect of tawrith al sulta (inheritance of power), the NDP has gone further than ever before toward acknowledging the need to widen the circle of political participation.

The NDP's attempt to present a more inclusive image was evident in three aspects of the conference. First, younger party members close to Gamal Mubarak frequently employed phrases such as "new thinking," "citizens' democratic rights," "code of honor" and "the soundness of political life." They declared that "the time has come for Egyptians to fully participate in public life" and conceded that Egyptians "deserve better treatment" by the country's ubiquitous and intrusive police. Even President Mubarak's conservative old guard aides, such as Safwat Al Sherif, NDP secretary general and minister of information, echoed the reform discourse.

Second, the NDP invited to the conference some outspoken civil society critics of the regime, leading to a lively September 26 dialogue between NDP young and old guard figures and civil society representatives. After going through intense security checks at the heavily guarded conference site, activists boldly expressed to NDP leaders, including Gamal Mubarak, the views of Egyptians with different political ideologies. They explained that the Emergency Law, extended for another three years by the NDP-controlled People's Assembly last February, remains the biggest obstacle on the road to democracy. They raised the problem of torture, which is still inflicted in police stations and prisons despite recent judicial rulings against police officers implicated in torture cases. They also stressed the need to change the constitution to reduce the power of the president and to introduce presidential term limits. Mubarak, who after coming to power in 1981 promised to stay in office for only two terms, has run unopposed in four presidential plebiscites. Many expect him to stand for reelection in 2005.

Third, President Mubarak announced several reform initiatives in his closing speech. He said that some military decrees enacted during the state of the emergency would be canceled. He called on the government to draft legislation permitting Egyptian women married to foreign husbands to pass Egyptian nationality onto their children, an issue long on the agenda of Egyptian women's rights organizations. Mubarak also called for a reassessment of laws regulating the activities of political parties, labor unions, and professional syndicates in order "to modernize and develop them and encourage effective participation by younger members and women," according to the official Egyptian news service.

Critics, including an emerging alliance of the liberal Al Wafd Party, the Arab nationalist Nasserist Party, the leftist Tagammu Party, the banned Islamist Labor Party, human rights groups, and independent activists, are deeply skeptical that real change is at hand. While the NDP has succeeded in recruiting some new members in recent months, the NDP's new image is "too little, too late," according to Mustafa Kamel Al Sayyid of Cairo University. "If the NDP is really committed to the cause of democracy, it should democratize itself" by electing, not appointing, members of its general secretariat and other national offices, Al Sayyid recommended.

Skeptics see the new discourse as part of a strategy to maintain, not lessen, the NDP's grip on power and to envelop Gamal Mubarak in a reformist glow, enhancing his chances of taking over from his aging father. They note that that the NDP's response to the demands made by civil society activists at the conference -- to enter into a dialogue -- is nothing new. Several times in the past two decades the NDP has called for dialogue with Egypt's small and beleaguered opposition parties. The NDP then ignored their proposals to repeal the Emergency Law and end the party's hegemony over political and media institutions, arguing that Egyptian society is not yet ready for such major reforms. This was essentially the position taken by the NDP at the conference. Skeptics also note that, as in the past, representatives of Islamist forces are excluded from the dialogue.

Reforms announced by President Mubarak fall short of meaningful political change. The rescinded military decrees pertain to building permits for agricultural land, while those dealing with national security and public order remain in effect. The latter decrees were a main instrument of political deliberalization in the 1990s. Furthermore, Mubarak's announcement does not curtail his government's ability to issue new military decrees.

Kamel Labidi is a Cairo-based journalist. He attended the recent NDP conference.