Cairo: During the annual congress of President Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party last December, one senior official after the other took the floor to brag about the party's alleged popularity. Some put the overall number of the party's members at three million.
But since last Friday, when massive anti-Mubarak protests erupted across this nation of 80 million, the offices of the ruling party were the target of angry demonstrators.
The headquarters of the ruling party near the Nile in central Cairo was set ablaze and its contents were ransacked. "Those who torched and plundered the building cannot be sincere Egyptians, because this building belongs to the people," the Secretary-General of the party Safwat Al Sherif was quoted as saying in the local press.
He added that the ruling party had stopped its members from facing "those looters" allegedly to stave off street battles. "The members of our party are not militias."
The National Democratic Party was founded by Mubarak's predecessor Anwar Sadat in the late 1970s. Over three decades, the party has been accused of being a rallying point to corrupt businessmen and tainted officials.
Senior officials inside the party, including the influential younger son of Mubarak Jamal have repeatedly denied such
accusations, saying that the party has never covered up suspected wrongdoers.
Jamal, who has been ascending inside the hierarchy of the party since the early 2000, has apparently dominated the party with the assistance of the so-called new guard - a term referring to business tycoons and young polidcians.
They include Ahmad Ezz, whose critics say has nurtured monopolistic trends in Egypt. Ezz, a steel baron, on Saturday quit his post as the secretary of the organisational affairs inside the ruling party. He was replaced with Majed Al Sherbini. "The government is to blame for the current crisis," Al Sherbini said on Monday. "Had it fulfilled the well-considered plans conceived by the (ruling) party, ordinary Egyptians would have felt the fruits of economic reforms," he added.
The ruling party was widely accused of rigging recent legislative elections in order to tighten its grip on the parliament and sideline its opponents. "Our party does not monopolise political life. Our strength lies in having strong rivals," said Sherbini.
If Mubarak survived the current turmoil, he is widely expected to overhaul the party, described by one observer as made of ice cream, "which melted at the first instance of heating".
