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WEEKLY
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| ‘These elections have already been fixed before being held’ |
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Tuesday, April 08, 2008
CAIRO: Egypt’s main opposition movement the Muslim Brotherhood said on Monday it will boycott Tuesday’s municipal elections after it was allowed to field only 20 candidates for thousands of seats.
We call on the Egyptian people to boycott the municipal elections because of the executive’s disregard for justice, the group’s deputy supreme leader Mohammed Habib told AFP. We are boycotting the election, he said.
The Brotherhood was set to field just 20 candidates after a wide-ranging government crackdown left many would-be candidates behind bars or blocked from registering.In contrast, President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party is fielding a candidate for every one of the 52,000 council seats up for grabs.
Ninety per cent of its candidates are standing unopposed, according to party members. The municipal elections rarely drew fierce competition in the past, but this year’s poll will be the first since a 2005 constitutional amendment required independent candidates running for the presidency to secure the backing of municipal councillors.
Presidential candidates need the support of at least 10 elected members of every local council in at least 14 provinces for their nomination to stand.Press reports said only 700 out 1,700 members of the opposition liberal Wafd party were able to register, as well as some 400 members of the left-leaning Tagammu party, amid complaints by opposition hopefuls of obstacles ranging from bureaucratic hurdles to physical assaults at registration stations.
The run-up to Tuesday’s elections has seen one of the most intense crackdowns on members of the Muslim Brotherhood, with more than 800 members of the group arrested in recent weeks.
The group has said the government is eager to avoid another electoral setback after the Brotherhood won 20 per cent of seats in parliament, where its members sit as independents because of their outlawed status. According to senior Brotherhood leader Essam Al Erian, the group’s candidate list was reduced from 5,754 to 498 members, prompting it to file 3,192 lawsuits demanding that candidates be reinstated on the ballots. It won 2,664 of these cases.
The government, however, has refused to honour the court rulings, Erian wrote in an editorial posted on the group’s website. It has become clear that the National Democratic Party will not face any real competition in the upcoming elections, he said. International organisations have condemned the government’s crackdown against opposition candidates.
As last reports came in, the Brotherhood said: ’These elections have already been fixed before being held.” ``It is to the extent that we feel we are not competing with a normal party but with a group of corrupt people who are willing to even resort to illegal and unethical means,’’ the statement said.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
