The sharp rise in the number of independent candidates elected to parliament reflects the demise of civil society. Increasingly, the political process is coming to depend on family loyalties and personal interests. The erosion of civil society has caused a regression in the role played by political parties, and an absence of the basic elements of modern parliamentary life. Instead of a modern idiom, political life speaks the language of the Middle Ages.
Parliament is about families and individuals rather than genuine public issues or national projects.
The prospect is of a terrifying defeat for civil society. And this, in turn, is due to a combination of factors. In the 1960s, socialist policy and state centralism set the tone. Sadat's uncontrolled open-door policy triggered the collapse of the bourgeoisie and gave way to new powers, which relied on the theory and practice of family loyalties and tribalism in the most recent parliamentary elections. The NDP accepted them as if giving in to developments that it was unable to control.