Khaled Hassen (23) joined the Conference Party because he was interested in serving the community and knew Amr Moussa, founder of the party. Khaled Hassan, like other members of his party, did not have similar strong ideological convictions as one sees with the Freedom and Justice Party, liberals or left-wing parties. In the words of Khaled Hassan:

    “We do not actually consider ourselves to be part of the left, we don’t. We are actually         nationalists. We look for what is good for this country and we go ahead and embrace it. It         is not like we are totally liberal, or it is not like we are totally of the right side. We try to         go in between. We try to balance things.”

Where Muslim Brothers strongly rely on personal relations with people in the community, Khaled Hassan sees his party mainly communicating with the people through TV, even with their own members.

Khaled Hassan

“Most political parties,” Khaled Hassan says, “rely on connections. You know someone from a big family with a big name, and you are going to get a lot of members. Because, for example, if you go to the rural areas like any other governerate rather than Cairo or Alexandria, you find big names and big families. If you have very good connections with these big names and the big families, this means that you have a lot of members in that location.”

That almost sounds like the NDP in the days of Mubarak. They too depended a lot on big families with a big name.

Concerning Khaled’s own activities in the party? He attends party conferences and participates in discussions. I first met Khaled through a seminar of the German Friedrich Naumann Foundation in May this year. Khaled actively engaged in discussions with senior people, asked questions and wanted to be involved to achieve the best for Egypt through a centrist position.

Please read more in research intern Omar Ali’s interview with Khaled here.

Cornelis Hulsman

Editor-in-chief Arab-West Report