How national can the dialogue be without the Muslim Brotherhood? Not very, the group's leading members tell Omayma Abdel-Latif Leading Muslim Brotherhood figures reacted with dismay to the National Democratic Party's (NDP) decision to exclude the banned group from an upcoming national dialogue, which will include representatives from many different political parties and civil society organisations. Speaking to Al- Ahram Weekly, two of the group's senior members said the government should seriously consider the potential political damage that will result from the snub. "The NDP would better serve the cause of reform by vigorously pursuing a policy of including all political forces that enjoy grassroots support," said Mohamed Mursi, who heads the Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc. Mursi accused the NDP of pursuing a policy that seeks to both marginalise the group and tarnish its image. "It feels threatened by the presence of a rival project like that of the Brotherhood, seeing us as a force to be defeated or ignored rather than harnessed," Mursi said. The decision to exclude the group may well have stemmed out of the on- going tensions between the government and the Brotherhood. As the government continues to round up and detain leading Brotherhood figures, it has also chosen to ignore reconciliatory statements made by the group's supreme guide, Maamoun El- Hodeibi. Analysts like Mustafa Kamel El- Sayed, a Cairo University political science professor, described the Brotherhood as "the strongest and most organised political force on the scene". As such, said El-Sayed, "a national dialogue that excludes them is more likely to aggravate domestic difficulties and undermine the NDP's self-proclaimed reform agenda." NDP officials, however, argue that the Brotherhood does not have the legal status necessary for participation in this kind of dialogue. According to a party source who spoke to the Weekly, "since the state does not see the Brotherhood as a legitimate group, it therefore follows that it has no right to participate in a process of national dialogue." The debate, if anything, has brought into focus questions about the legitimacy of other political forces as well. The Brotherhood has always seen itself as being amongst the forces that truly represent the will of the people. Brotherhood leaders cite the 17 seats won by the group in the 2000 parliamentary elections, making it the largest opposition bloc in the Peoples Assembly. "What, other than ballot boxes and public opinion, is there that bestows legitimacy on any political party or force?" asked Mursi. "From where do any of the parties that are considered legitimate derive their legitimacy, especially considering that none of them, including the NDP itself, have any grassroots support or links to the electorate? The ballot boxes have shown that the Muslim Brotherhood commands more support, in terms of MPs elected, than all of the other opposition parties combined." Abdel-Moneim Abul-Futuh, a member of the Doctors Syndicate as well as the Maktab Al-Irshad office, the Brother's most senior policy-making body, said the decision to exclude the Brotherhood from the national dialogue had come as no surprise to the group. Many Brotherhood members, however, say that they had hoped that President Hosni Mubarak's call for dialogue would have sought to include all political parties and forces that enjoy substantial public support and that there would have been no automatic exclusion of groups considered illegitimate by the regime. "There is an unwritten understanding that when you make reference to political forces, as President Mubarak did in his speech calling for national dialogue, then you are including the Brotherhood and the communists, though they are the two forces that do not enjoy any legitimacy in the eyes of the regime," Abul-Futuh said. "The president's instructions on the national dialogue issue might have been misconstrued by the NDP's old guard," argued one Brotherhood member. Abul-Futuh and others expressed concern over the fact that opposition political parties "have agreed to participate in a dialogue from which other important political forces have been excluded". He characterised the move as "undemocratic" "It is no more than a case of political opportunism. The fact that both the leftist Tagammu Party and the liberal Wafd Party have remained silent about the brotherhood being left out of this dialogue goes against the basics of any democratic process." Both Abul-Futuh and Mursi are sceptical that the dialogue can result in any real reform. "If the NDP and the government were serious about reform they would have moved beyond rhetoric to lift the emergency law. Otherwise," Abul- Futuh argues, "what has been billed as national dialogue will end up being little more than an exercise in superficial tinkering designed to soak up growing public anger."
