The Muslim Brotherhood's failure to win a single seat in the Shura Council's mid-term election comes as no surprise, reports Gamal Essam El-Din The Muslim Brotherhood failed to win any seats in the mid-term Shura Council elections. The second run-off round was held on Tuesday, without any Brotherhood candidates running. Brotherhood leaders expectedly voiced sharp criticism of the ruling National Democratic (NDP), which swept the poll. The NDP secured 80 seats, the opposition won four seats and the independents won the remaining four seats. Essam El-Erian, the official in charge of the group's political agenda, accused the NDP, in collaboration with the security forces, of manipulating the poll. "The ballot lacked any judicial supervision and was rife with irregularities and fraud," he claimed . According to the Higher Electoral Commission (HEC), the election was marked by complete transparency. Four opposition party-based candidates were able to secure seats: Tagammu's Salah Misbah in the Nile-Delta governorate of Damietta; Al-Geel's Ahmed Al-Agouz and the Arab Nasserist's Mohsen Attia in the Old Cairo districts of Gammaliya and Azbakiya, and Ghad's Moussa Mustafa Moussa in Giza. It is the first time the Nasserist Party has been represented on the Shura Council. According to El-Erian "a handful of opposition candidates were allowed to win to give a false impression that the polls were not rigged." Days before the June poll El-Erian said the Brotherhood wanted to penetrate the Shura Council so that "the movement gains greater legitimacy and prestige". The Brotherhood fielded 15 candidates, including three members of the People's Assembly. Their failure may well be behind the Brotherhood throwing its weight behind the political reform campaign of Mohamed El-Baradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). El-Baradei held a press conference on Tuesday with Mohamed El-Katatni, leader of the Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc, during which the movement announced it would help in the drive to collect a million signatures for El-Baradei's petition to change the constitution and introduce guarantees for free and fair elections, including the presence of international monitors. The failure to secure a single Shura Council seat will not, says El-Erian, "dissuade the movement from contesting the elections to the People's Assembly, scheduled next October." "This is more important to us. The Shura Council lacks any real powers or popular appeal," he argued. The Brotherhood currently holds 86 seats in the 454-member People's Assembly. The movement has never occupied a seat on the Shura Council since it was established by president Anwar El-Sadat in 1980. The Brotherhood's drubbing in the Shura elections, dominated by the NDP since 1980, was expected, says Al-Ahram analyst Amr Hashem Rabie. Rabie doubts the Brotherhood's alliance with El-Baradei will hold firm. "This is a tactical move. Should the Brotherhood hold its seats in next October's elections the alliance will collapse," he predicts. The liberal-oriented Wafd Party, which fielded 10 candidates, also failed to win a seat. The party hoped that Mahmoud Abdel-Wahed, its candidate in the Upper-Egypt governorate of Sohag's district of Baliana, will buck that trend in the run-off poll. "Out of 88 contested seats the NDP has secured 66," said Intessar Nessim, chairman of the HEC. "Add to this the 14 seats in which the NDP was standing uncontested and it has won 80 of the 88 seats up for grabs in the consultative upper house." Twenty candidates competed for the 10 seats in the run-off ballot on Tuesday. "Of these, 11 belong to the NDP, one to the Wafd Party, and eight are independent candidates. Most, if not all, of the independents are NDP members who decided to run outside the party umbrella. According to Nessim, the turnout was 30.8 per cent (7.8 million) of registered voters during the first round. He denied that the voting was marred by any irregularities. "The election was marked by complete transparency. Vote-counting committees did their job in the presence of monitors from civil society organisations and foreign and local press correspondents," said Nessim. "If it had the slightest doubt about the propriety of the elections the HEC would not have announced the results." Brotherhood officials, though, say their observers were barred from entering polling and vote- counting stations. They also complain that their supporters were systematically harassed by security forces. Full judicial oversight of elections was cancelled in 2007. "If there is any lesson to be learned from the Shura polls it is the necessity of again placing elections under full judicial supervision," says Rabie. "Without this, the two houses of parliament will continue to lack credibility in the eyes of local and foreign observers." Nor, says Rabie, is it credible that turnout reached 30 per cent. He estimates the correct figure to be less than three per cent. "The Shura poll contained many bad signals for the Brotherhood. It could well be stripped of all its seats in the forthcoming People's Assembly election." Responding to detractors, Moufid Shehab, minister of state for legal and parliamentary affairs, insisted the HEC had complete powers in supervising the election. "Integrity was the hallmark of the Shura elections," Shehab told the Weekly. He described Brotherhood complaints that the election was rigged as "false and unfounded". "If they believed the election would be rigged beforehand, why did they decide to contest it?" asked Shehab. Shehab believes the Brotherhood's failure in the Shura polls shows "it is not the strong opposition force some think". "It is an outlawed group which mixes religion with politics and in recent years people have become increasingly aware of this. They prefer to vote for legitimate parties rather than for extremist group." "The NDP prepared well for the Shura polls. We have learned the lessons from the 2005 elections in which the Brotherhood mobilised its supporters and won 88 seats. This time we mobilised our own supporters," said Shehab. The Shura Council, whose primary role is to examine proposed legislation before it is referred to the People's Assembly for a final vote, comprises 264 members, of which a third are presidential appointees.
