Mohamed Refaat El-Saeed

Mohammed Refaat El-Saeed (Arabic: محمد رفعت السعيد‎ Muhammad Rifaʻatu s-Saʻīd, 11 October 1932 – 17 August 2017) was an Egyptian politician, scholar and writer.[1][2] He served as the general secretary of the National Progressive Unionist Party (Tagammu).[1][3] El-Saeed held two doctorates in history, and was a part-time lecturer at the American University in Cairo.[1] El-Saeed was a frequent contributor to al-Ahali, the Tagammu party organ.[1][4]

Career

During the 1940s and 1950s, El-Saeed was active in the Democratic Movement for National Liberation (Haditu) and was seen as close to the leader of the movement, Henri Curiel.[1] He was arrested in the 1958 crackdown on communist activities, and would spend four years in jail.[2]

When the Tagammu party was founded, El-Saeed served as its organizational secretary.[1] Within Tagammu, El-Saeed was identified with the tendency that he was willing to enter into compromises with the regime of Hosni Mubarak.[1] Notably, under his leadership Tagammu was the sole opposition party not to boycott the 1990 election.[5] In early 1995 Tagammu accepted the presidential nomination of El-Saeed to the Shura Council, the upper house of parliament.[6]

For El-Saeed, the tactical alliance with Mubarak stemmed from a desire to block the Muslim Brotherhood to advance its influence in Egyptian politics.[5] El-Saeed's consistent fierce opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood constitutes a key component of his political discourse and authorship.[4] He dedicated many of his written works to this subject (such as Contre L'Integrisme Islamiste in French).[1][4] In response to his line on political Islam, he was placed in prominent positions on the death lists of militant groups.[1]

Within Tagammu, El-Saeed remained a controversial figure due to his links to Mubarak.[1][2][7] Some sectors of the party disagreed with his hardline stance against the Muslim Brotherhood.[4] Dissent in the party erupted again following the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, as 73 Central Committee members of the party resigned in protest of El-Saeed's leadership. In particular the participation of Tagammu in the 2010 elections was a bone of contention.[7]

Death

El-Saeed died on 17 August 2017 at the age of 84.[8]

gollark: - I believe we should end racial discrimination by replacing computer monitors with 1-bit black and white displays so race cannot be distinguished.
gollark: - As eating meat places suffering on millions of innocent animals, I believe animal meat should be replaced with human flesh from donors, as humans are able to meaningfully consent to this while animals are not (and don't get a choice in practice anyway).
gollark: - To increase the efficiency of the education system and encourage self-directed learning, I believe schools should lock children in individual cubicles with textbooks for 5 hours a day instead of using classrooms and teachers.
gollark: - It's important to me that women aren't forced to have children they don't want or may not be able to take care of.- which is why I support mandatory sterilization for all - children would be grown in vats and raised by the government instead.
gollark: - I support the right to privacy!- In light of governments' large-scale mass surveillance campaigns which they do not seem inclined to stop, I would support an open and transparent volunteer spying agency using open source software and hardware to gather and process data in order to act as a competitor.

References
  1. Al-Ahram. The organiser Archived 2012-09-21 at the Wayback Machine
  2. Jadaliyya. National Progressive Unionist (Tagammu) Party
  3. Africa research bulletin: Political, social, and cultural series, Vol. 32. Blackwell, 1995. p. 1879
  4. Zahid, Mohammed. The Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt's Succession Crisis: The Politics of Liberalisation and Reform in the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris, 2012. p. 172
  5. Bernard-Maugiron, Nathalie, and Nicholas S. Hopkins. Political and social protest in Egypt. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2009. p. 170
  6. Kassem, May. In the Guise of Democracy: Governance in Contemporary Egypt. Reading: Ithaca Press, 1999. p. 107
  7. Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. The Left in post-Jan 25-Egypt
  8. اليوم السابع. وفاة الدكتور رفعت السعيد الرئيس السابق لحزب التجمع (in Arabic)
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