One third -- no more and maybe less -- is the strategy of the Muslim Brotherhood for the upcoming legislative elections, writes Dina Ezzat Of the 508 contested parliamentary seats, the Muslim Brotherhood is running for a little over 130, including the newly added women's quota seats. In other words, the Muslim Brotherhood are setting around the same target they opted for during the last legislative elections in 2005: one third of parliament's seats -- maybe less but not more. "This is what we are going for, the third. We are not pursuing a majority. We would contend to be in the opposition -- but effective and active opposition," said Hamdi Hassan, MP for Alexandria, who is running this year to keep his seat. Muslim Brotherhood candidates are already hard at work to secure the votes they need for an elections day they say will likely entail heavy government intervention against them. According to Hassan, "we are very concerned that the violations reported during the Shura Council [lower house of parliament] elections will reoccur in the legislative elections -- especially in the absence of direct judicial supervision." And while government officials and leading figures of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) insist that the upcoming elections will be fair and transparent, one NDP member admitted: "Our strategy is to discredit members of the so-called Muslim Brotherhood, and to really challenge their candidates." According to this member there are two tactics: first, run tough-to-beat candidates in districts where the Muslim Brotherhood is running popular candidates (an obvious example is the NDP decision to run Alexandria's former governor Abdel-Salam El-Mahgoub, who is well respected, against the popular Sobhi Salah of the Brotherhood); second, to "speak up" against Brotherhood candidates and "to show to the public that they too are not without mistakes". Muslim Brotherhood members insist that their exemplary record in parliament will make it difficult for their candidates to be challenged. For the last five years, Brotherhood MPs and candidates say they pushed the government on numerous issues, ranging from inexplicably low prices for the sale of state-owned land to NDP-supporting business tycoons to the inexplicable low price of natural gas exports to Israel, and from the hazards of privatising public sector companies to inadequate salaries for teachers. "And we made our voice -- that in fact represents the voices of our voters -- well heard," said Ahmed Diab, an MP for Greater Cairo who is set to run again in the next elections. Established in the 1920s as essentially a social-religious group, the Muslim Brotherhood is perceived today by the government, opposition and the people alike as the main political contender to the ruling NDP chaired by President Hosni Mubarak. Since the mid-1970s, when late president Anwar El-Sadat expressed sympathy for the political profile of the group, and despite a later crackdown, the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood has been on the rise. Students who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly at both Cairo and Ain Shams universities failed to name more than one other opposition party -- the Wafd. Some even failed to name the Wafd Party, one of Egypt's oldest political parties. Every student the Weekly spoke to saw the Muslim Brotherhood as an active and influential political power, with some adding that it "could rule one day". Unlike political parties -- ruling and opposition -- that appear to many as holed up within poorly attended headquarters, the Muslim Brotherhood is perceived as present in public life, via university student groupings, numberless charities and mosques, and through professional syndicates. Brotherhood candidates are running under the legally contested banner, "Islam is the Solution". But other slogans in use include "Together we can change" and "Towards reform we work together". The discourse complementing these slogans is not purely religious. Brotherhood candidates insist that they do not mean to antagonise Egypt's Christian minority, mostly Copts. Indeed, Brotherhood leaders and candidates insist that the group is not opposed to the rights of Christians, though they fail to give straightforward answers to direct questions about the lack of equal rights of Christians to build churches and the rights of Copts, or any other non-Muslim, to hold high state positions, the presidency aside. "What we really need to build are factories for people to find jobs," said Mohamed Nasr of the Alexandria-based media centre for Muslim Brotherhood candidates. According to Samia, a Coptic woman from Shubra, one of Cairo's districts with a high Coptic Christian population, "It is not that we have so many rights that the Muslim Brotherhood would strip us of. We are treated as second class citizens and this is the fact of the matter." It is only that the Muslim Brotherhood is more open in "speaking about us as second class citizens". To date, the Brotherhood has failed to respond to criticism of its 2007 draft political platform. They say they are busy attending to the pressing day-to-day needs of all Egyptians. "Look at the piles of garbage, look at the sewage leaks and look at the prices of vegetables. What should I say? What am I supposed to say?" asked Karima, a woman in her early 50s in Ismailia. "Forget about meat; even tomatoes are too expensive. It is terrifying," she said. "Look. Look at these buses. They have no windows and no plates, but they are still driving people around. Do you know why? Because people have no alternative... the public transport services provided by the government are useless, so people resort to this private service that is affordable but not very safe," said Yassin in Alexandria. Services and prices topped the priority list of Muslim Brotherhood MPs in parliament during the past five years. According to official records, hardly a session was held without an MP from the Brotherhood bringing up a question about the deteriorating quality of healthcare, public education, retirement pensions or public transport. Whatever the government-run television failed to mention, independent channels and papers did. Day in and day out the public has been following news of Muslim Brotherhood MPs challenging the government. "We owe much to the independent newspapers and TV channels, and I think the recent crackdown on some papers and TV programmes is prompted by our participation in the next elections. The government did not want us to communicate with public opinion through these papers or programmes, and of course we are not allowed on [government run] TV," said MP Hassan. "If we were not running, you would not have seen this crackdown," he added. But Brotherhood members know how to make up for the media constraints they face. Through e-mail, blogger accounts, flyers, CDs distributed at sympathetic mosques and schools, candidates communicate with eligible voters. And while the financial generosity of Muslim Brotherhood candidates -- which is far from being insignificant -- cannot compete with the pre-election financial donations offered and promised by their NDP adversaries, the Muslim Brotherhood count on a long and well-established base of charities that go beyond direct financial allocations offered to poor families to subsidies on healthcare and education services. "The Muslim Brotherhood has always been at the service of the people and it always will be, and this is something that the people know," said Sabri Khalafallah, a Brotherhood candidate and MP in Ismailia. And in districts with a considerable Christian population, Brotherhood candidates reach out to bishops with displays of goodwill. "We have been working with the nearby Catholic Church on a programme to support girls that drop out from primary schools due to the lack of resources, and it has been going very well," said Nasr of the Brotherhood's Alexandria media centre. Nasr is also ready with photos of Alexandria Muslim Brotherhood MPs standing with Christian clergymen. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood is counting on the sympathy they gain as the harassment they get from the authorities escalates. "It is a fact that the harsher the harassment against Muslim Brotherhood members, the more the sympathy," writes Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh, a leading Brotherhood figure, in his recently printed memoirs. There are fears of violent confrontation between Muslim Brotherhood candidates and their supporters and sympathisers on the one hand and the NDP candidates, supporters and sympathisers on the other on elections day. While the NDP camp is repeatedly raising the spectre of the "history of violence of the Muslim Brotherhood", the Brotherhood affirms that it will not resort. "Not even if we feel that our rights are being undermined. We will not take things towards a scenario of anarchy, never," said Khalafallah. According to Ahmed Diab, Brotherhood candidate in Greater Cairo, "there will be a reaction" to any vote rigging, but this reaction will never come at the expense of "the country's stability".
