National Party (Egypt)

The National Party (Arabic: ﺍﻟﺤﺰﺐ ﺍﻟﻮﻃﻨﻲ, al-Ḥizb al-Waṭanī) was a nationalist political party in Egypt.

Founded as political movement in 1895, the Watani was led by Mustafa Kamil Pasha, a Francophile journalist from Alexandria. The National Party platform was composed mainly by the city bourgeoisie, monarchy's sympathizers and also by the Khedive Abbas II, a noted anglophobe.^[1] The party also published a newspaper from 1900, Al Liwa (Arabic: The Flag), with clear anti-British views. In the same year, Abdul Hamid II nominated Mustafa Kamil as pasha for his support to the Ottoman Empire. Its anti-British positions increased after the Denshawai Incident in 1906.

They became officially a party on 22 October 1907, after the first Congress of the National Party. During the Congress, Mustafa Kamil supported the constitutional monarchy. However, Kamil died only two months after the Congress, and the National Party was inherited by Mohammad Farid. Under Farid's leadership, the party supported the monarchy, law and order policies and statism,^[2] especially after the Prime Minister Boutros Ghali's assassination in 1910. Ironically, Boutros Ghali's assassin was a National Party sympathizer.

After the First world war ended and the death of Farid in 1919, the party began its decline. Mohammad Hafiz Ramadan Bey led the National Party and started a pro-Wafd policy, that became the first political party in Egypt. The party didn't win many seats in the elections, and after the coup d'état of 1952, the party was banned.

Electoral history

House of Representatives elections

Election	Party leader	Seats	+/–	Position
1926	Hafiz Ramadan	5 / 215	5	4th
1936		4 / 232	3	3rd
1942		2 / 264	2	3rd
1945		7 / 264	5	4th
1950		6 / 319	1	4th

References

This page was last edited on 18 April 2024, at 17:19