The Muslim Brotherhood's internal elections are perceived as an attempt to consolidate the position of hardliners, reports Sophia Ibrahim In a surprise move five new members have been elected to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood's most influential decision-making body, the Guidance Bureau. The results of the secret ballot, yet to be confirmed by the group's top leaders, are seen by observers as consolidating the hold of hardliners at the expense of the reformists' camp. More significantly, one of the newly elected members will replace the Muslim Brotherhood's imprisoned chief strategist Khairat El-Shater, signalling a victory for El-Shater's longstanding rival Mohamed Habib. The Guidance Bureau's 16 members are usually elected every five years by the group's 72-member Shura council. The last elections, though, were held in 1995 and have been delayed since by fears among council members that they would be subject to a police crackdown should they meet to vote. It still remains unclear how the latest vote was managed. The secret ballot ended up in defeat for the reformists spearheaded by Essam El-Erian, the group's media coordinator, Abdel-Sattar El-Meligui, economist Abdel-Hamid El-Ghazali, Ibrahim El-Zaafarani and popular former lawmaker Gamal Heshmat. Winners, meanwhile, include Saad El-Qatatni, head of the Brotherhood's parliament caucus, Mahala Al-Kubra MP Saad El-Husseini, Mohi Hamid, Osama Nasr and Mohamed Abdel-Rahman. They will replace El-Shater and Mohamed Ali Besh, both of whom are serving prison sentences after being convicted by a military tribunal earlier this year, Mohamed Helal, who has resigned owing to ill-health, and two recently deceased members of the bureau. The newly elected members are known to be loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood's hardliners, themselves an offshoot of the old Al-Tanzim Al-Khas (Special Organisation), the secretive paramilitary wing that fought against the British occupation in the 1940s. The group's most senior leaders are now Mohamed Mahdi Akef, Mohamed Habib and Mahmoud Ezzat. Together they embody the ascendancy of the Special Organisation in the Brotherhood's current structure. Tharwat El-Kharabawi, a former member of the group, says that the hegemony of the conservatives has been growing for three decades now, and they have consistently thwarted attempts by reformist members to promote a more civic-minded organisation. "The group has been transformed in terms of its structure, rhetoric and educational and religious curriculum into an offshoot of the Special Organisation," says El-Kharabawi, who points out to the death of the moderate leader Omar El-Telmisani as the starting point of the hardliners' campaign to secure the levers of power. The hardliners, El-Kharabawi charges, have incorporated practices inspired by the Special Organisation, including a monthly brigade and the annual camp, which involve young recruits in intensive training sessions that are tantamount to brainwashing. "The group under Akef has seen a great expansion of the influence of hardliners," he warns. The extent of that influence was clear in the manifesto issued by the group for its putative political party. The platform included stark discrimination against Christians and women and an Iranian-inspired political system which would allow clerics to review parliamentary decisions. The agenda shocked many of the Brotherhood's sympathisers and those intellectuals that had argued it must be incorporated into the political process. The group dismissed any criticism, insisting the manifesto was a reflection of its conservative grassroots. Struggles between the hardliners themselves have now resulted in victory for Mohamed Habib's camp following El-Shater's imprisonment, even though Habib, quoted on Abdel-Moneim Mahmoud's blog Ana Ikhwan, denies that El-Shater is being replaced by a newly elected member. El-Kharabawi sees the imprisonment of El-Shater as a golden opportunity to eradicate his influence. "He was close to the hardliners but his vision was different. The struggle was over special interests not ideologies." Most experts believe that the rise of the hardliners has been facilitated by the security crackdown on the group which acted to weaken the reformists and strengthen the hardliners' camp.
