Crackdown on Opposition Ahead of Egyptian Elections
blurb:isstoday:03032008egypt
3 March 2008: Crackdown on Opposition Ahead of Egyptian Elections
President Hosni Mubarak announced early last month that the long-delayed municipal elections would finally be held on 8th April, putting an end to rumours that the polls could be postponed for a further two years or until 2010. The Egyptian constitution provides for the holding of these elections every four years. They should have been held in 2006, as the previous round took place in 2002. According to recently released statistics, between 50,000 and 52,000 seats will be up for grabs in the polls.
These elections are significant in many respects. For one thing, according to Minister of Local Development Abdel-Salam El-Mahgoub, a new law currently being drafted by the government under which members of elected local councils “will enjoy greater supervisory powers over executive councils in Egypt’s 26 governorates”.
More important is the fact that the amended Article 76 of the Egyptian Constitution now requires that political leaders aspiring to run in the 2011 presidential elections obtain the signatures of at least 140 members of elected local councils (at the governorate level), with 10 signatures coming from 14 of the country’s 26 governorates.
The enthusiasm of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) for the municipal polls has been met with antipathy on the part of legal opposition parties and outlawed groups, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood. While opposition parties have either been hit by internal power struggles or by a lack of the necessary financial resources required to run in the municipal polls, there are reports that members of the Muslim Brotherhood have been subject to a police crackdown since the authorities announced the date of the polls. On the day of the announcement of the elections police reportedly arrested 51 members of the group. The number arrested over the last few weeks is reported to be over 300.
It is widely believed that these arrests are an attempt by the Egyptian government to intimidate members of the banned but tolerated party from standing in the election as independents. This, it is alleged, is designed to avoid a repeat of the landslide victory the Muslim Brotherhood achieved in this way in the 2005 parliamentary elections. In an interview to the popular Egyptian paper, Al-Ahram Weekly, Essam El-Erian, the Brotherhood’s political official claimed: “The NDP leaders have seized this two-year period [from 2006 when elections were supposed to be held] to pass constitutional amendments in their favour, and now they plan to strip the Brotherhood of winning a single seat ...”
The crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood is both understandable and paradoxical. It is understandable in the sense that governing parties everywhere in the world attempt to discredit and sideline their most formidable opponents at election time. It is no secret that the Muslim Brotherhood stands a good chance of winning any free and fair election in Egypt. The problem with what is happening now in Egypt, as elsewhere in Africa, is the use by the ruling party of extra-legal means to silence its opponents.
The paradox lies in the justification for banning the group, which focuses on the fact that the group is a religious party and that its political programme is to establish an “Islamic state” in Egypt. Yet Article 2 of the Egyptian constitution states in no uncertain terms that “Islam is the state religion”. Of course some policy statements of some key members of the Brotherhood are questionable or even unacceptable in the multi-cultural and multi-religious country that Egypt is. But one must understand that the party is not a monolithic one, as it might appear to an outside observer or as the ruling party in Egypt tends to portray it. Within the Brotherhood there are those, mainly the younger and more educated members, whose views are considerably more moderate than those of some of the old guard.
Many Egyptians view the Muslim Brotherhood as the only credible alternative to the ruling party. What the Egyptian authorities should realise is that all political parties and movements hold programmes in opposition that, once in power, they find impossible to act upon. In fact, some election analysts have concluded that not more than 40 per cent of campaign programmes of any political party anywhere in the world are implemented. There seems to be something about power that makes its holders change and adapt to its requirements. So why not give them a chance to be seen in action and count on the fact that the realities of power will force them to adapt many of their “threatening” policies over time?
Issaka K. Souaré, Researcher, African Security Analysis Programme, ISS Pretoria (Tshwane)
