Egypt: on the eve of legislative elections

In a district of central Cairo, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, a jovial man of about forty years has pretty good press.

But does he have any chance to become a parliament member? Observers have noticed that a year before the presidential election, the regime has already decided to lock down these elections. Caciques of power have argued that the “surprise” of 2005 when the Islamist Brotherhood won a fifth of the 454 seats in the People’s Assembly, would not happen again. As in every election, hundreds of the Muslim Brotherhood members – officially banned as an Islamist movement on the political scene, but tolerated under the label of “independent” – were arrested. Their supporters started colliding, since last week, with the police in multiple clashes. The regime has also paved the way on the legal field. “Fraud will be facilitated this year by the lack of judges, who supervised the 2005 elections and limited the extent of trickeries. In 2007, the government passed amendments to the Constitution to replace the judges by an election committee, close to the power. As a consequence of these measures, some opposition groups have called for a boycott of the legislative elections, qualified as the election of shame. This is the case of the National Coalition for Change, leaded by Mohamed El Baradei, the former Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who is campaigning for a constitutional amendment, so that independent candidates could run for the presidency seat. It is currently impossible. Greater democratisation in the country is desirable, and we do strongly believe it feasible, but with a new president. President Hosni Mubarak is so busy trying to impose his son Gamal.

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