The September 21-23 conference of Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) was notable in several respects. First, the proceedings were dominated by Gamal Mubarak, President Hosni Mubarak's 41-year-old son who heads the NDP's powerful policies secretariat, keeping alive rumors that he is being groomed to succeed his father. Second, the presence of some sixty invited foreign observers suggested the government's growing sensitivity to its image abroad. Third, the event made clear that the conference slogan "New Thinking and the Priorities of Reform" refers to economic, not political, reform.

After five years of inertia on economic reform, the Mubarak regime recently has revived its "economics first" mantra of the 1990s. The younger, technocratic economic liberals brought into the cabinet in a July reshuffle announced at the conference bold plans to revive the dormant privatization program, slash tariffs and taxes, and reform the banking system. The NDP's clear message was that expanding the private sector, shrinking the role of the state, and attracting foreign investment would be the only path to fixing Egypt's deeply troubled economy.

By contrast, the package of political reforms unveiled at the conference was timid. The party leadership rejected opposition demands for a constitutional amendment to allow direct competitive presidential elections in 2005 and to impose term limits, for an end to the 23-year state of emergency, and for the lifting of controls on political parties and civil society organizations in advance of the parliamentary elections scheduled for next year. It also rebuffed calls to legalize the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead, NDP officials proposed modest amendments to the political party law, the election law, and the professional syndicates law. Party leaders asserted that such reforms aim to broaden popular participation and civic freedoms and to strengthen political parties and non-governmental organizations in a process that is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

A proposed amendment to the political parties law would add three non-partisan public figures to the committee that licenses and oversees parties; at present, it is composed almost entirely of government officials. The committee will hardly be a neutral arbiter, however—its members will be chosen by President Mubarak, and Safwat Sherif, NDP chairman and former minister of information, will remain as its head. The committee will also retain the power to reject the legalization of new parties on the basis of vague criteria such as that the party's program does not "constitute an addition to public life." The proposed amendments to the political participation law would establish a higher elections commission headed by the Minister of Justice and including a representative of the Ministry of Interior and five nonpartisan public figures. The commission is tasked with modernizing the voters' registry, drawing electoral districts, regulating election campaigns, and announcing results. However, the NDP rejected the opposition's call to revise the flawed voters' register before next year's vote.

Finally, the NDP proposed amending the law governing professional syndicates, leading sites of political activism in Egypt. The current law stipulates that if a syndicate's elections fail to attract more than 50 percent of the membership (or 30 percent in a second round), the leadership must step down after three months and the syndicate must be placed under judicial supervision until valid elections can be held. (This measure was adopted in 1993 to curb the rising influence of the Muslim Brotherhood after its candidates gained control of the influential doctors' and engineers' syndicates through elections with very small turnouts. It prevented several syndicates from electing new leadership for almost ten years). The revised law would allow the existing leadership to remain in place until valid elections are held, and would reduce the quorum to 30 percent (or 20 percent in a second round) for elections on the local level—but not for those on the governorate and national levels, which may prevent many syndicates from holding valid elections.

The proposed laws would constitute the first reforms of Egypt's political laws after a decade during which the regime constricted rights and participation. The ruling party has implicitly acknowledged that the political system needs upgrading, and that the party itself needs to burnish its image in advance of the 2005 parliamentary elections. However, the measures are essentially cosmetic because they would not restrict the overwhelming powers of the executive branch or expand political competition.

The outcome of the NDP conference was hardly a surprise. Although in the past two years opposition groups have become bolder in their criticism of the regime and more ambitious in their demands, they remain weak and isolated. For the ruling party, they are irrelevant. Furthermore, external pressure for political change has proved to be erratic, and the government seems to have deflected it by making promises in the economic reform and foreign policy arenas—in the latter, by proposing to take on a major security role in Gaza after a potential Israeli withdrawal in 2005. The conference demonstrated that while the ruling party is willing to talk of political reform, it intends to maintain firm control over the nature and the pace of change.

Dina Shehata is a researcher at the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.