Rentabook

Political situation

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People's Assembly |
National Democratic Party| 311 | -93 |
Independents (Muslim Brotherhood) | 88 | +71 |
Independents | 24 | -3 |
Neo-Wafd Party | 6 | - |
Progressive National Unionist Party | 2 | -3 |
Tomorrow Party | 1 | -1 |Nasserist Party | 0 | -1 |
Liberal Party | 0 | -1 |
Non-elected | 10 | - |
Still undecided | 12 | |
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Head of state: President Hosni Mubarak
Prime minister: Atef Muhammed Abeid
There are 31ministers, heading each ministry, while the prime minister also heads the Ministry of Planning and International Co-operation.
The national assembly is called the People's Assembly, and has 454 seats,of which the president appoints 10 representatives. The National Democratic Party holds 415 of these seats.
Egypt is politically stable, but there have been many examples of unrest in recent years.Egypt has only a limited democracy, where elections allow only some political parites, and the elections have proven to allow few changes from pre-democratic times. Still, Egypt has made greatadvances, and may arrive at a true democracy in the coming years. The main challenge is the Muslim Brotherhood, which run for elections, but which adhere to an anti-democratic ideology. Their strength in the2005 elections may stop Egypt's Western allies from pushing the democratic reforms any further.
Egypt is a country with a fair amount of freedom of speech, and civil rights are in most cases wellsecured.
At the present, the militant wings of Islamist groups (to which the Muslim Brotherood also belong) represent at the moment little threat to the Egyptian government, although the situation wasuncertain after the bomb attacks at the tourist resort Sharm el-Sheikh in 2005.
At the present, there is about 17,000 political prisoners in Egypt. A majority of these are Islamists (according to...