Confrontation between the ruling National Democratic Party and the Muslim Brotherhood has intensified, with the latter threatening to be a tough rival in the forthcoming municipal elections, reports Gamal Essam El-Din Although it is still too early to judge, the municipal elections slated to be held on 8 April promise to be dramatic, with a two-week-long clampdown on the Muslim Brotherhood apparently not being enough to discourage the outlawed group from contesting the polls. At a press conference held in Cairo on 21 February, the Brotherhood's Supreme Guide Mahdi Akef claimed that, "the continuing clampdown on Brotherhood members will not succeed in dissuading the group from standing in the local elections." There was a consensus among the group's leading officials, Akef said, that allegations of rigging and police harassment should not be allowed to deter Brotherhood candidates from running. "This is not meant as a challenge or a show of strength, but rather it is an attempt to stimulate participation in the country's political life," he said. Without the Brotherhood's participation, the elections would be dead. "We are keen to run because we do not want to be yet another source of frustration for the Egyptian people." In standing up to the police campaign against them, Akef said, the Brotherhood's strategy would include two new policies: abandoning the traditional slogan of "Islam is the Solution" and a decision to keep the names of the group's candidates secret. "Our message this time round will be against corruption and inflation," Akef said, adding that the Brotherhood's intention of not publishing the names of its candidates was due not to the crackdown but rather to a desire to allow voters the right to choose candidates for their integrity and performance, without being concerned by party labels. Nevertheless, Akef's first deputy, Mohamed Habib, later said that the group did not intend to give up its traditional slogan. "This slogan, 'Islam is the Solution', is not ours alone. Rather, it belongs to all Egyptians," he said, adding that "at this stage we also intend to add other slogans, primarily against corruption." Habib said that he expected that at least 20 per cent of the Brotherhood's members in each governorate would decide to stand in the municipal elections, though "decisions about this will be left to the chairmen of the Brotherhood's offices in each governorate." Habib also expressed his hope that the Brotherhood's candidates would include women and Coptic Christians. Brotherhood sources said that the group's candidates could be as many as 40,000, vying for 52,000 seats nationwide in the municipal polls. At the same time, other leading Brotherhood members, among them Essam El-Erian, said that the price of the Brotherhood's participation in the polls would be high in terms of arrests. Yet, El-Erian argued, "gains will also be high in terms of generating sympathy for the group among the popular classes, not to mention alerting the outside world to the undemocratic practices of the National Democratic Party [NDP] regime in Egypt." El-Erian said that in challenging the NDP at the elections the Brotherhood intended to try to provoke discontent in the ranks of the ruling party. Reports have indicated that NDP rallies held from 23 to 28 February in order to select the party's candidates had been hit by acts of thuggery, going as far as bloody fistfights. Power struggles within the NDP between business tycoons and old political families on one side, and party MPs and chairmen of provincial offices on the other, have also caused serious rifts. The party's leaders are determined that even if the campaign against the Brotherhood is not enough to kill the group's hopes in the local polls, the NDP should still try to field candidates with the highest possible reputations. Businessman and NDP Secretary for Organisational Affairs Ahmed Ezz has instructed that businessmen, politically active university teachers and members of prominent families in the different governorates should head the lists of the party's candidates. Party insiders also say that the NDP's rule that 30 per cent of its candidates should be selected by its leading officials has given Ezz free rein to ignore many old-guard nominees in favour of businessmen. This has angered many party candidates, who have resigned and are now running as independents. Meanwhile, many NDP MPs in the People's Assembly and Shura Council have voiced criticisms of the party's new rule that 10 per cent of its candidates in each governorate should be left to the choice of the chairmen of the provincial party offices. In the Upper Egyptian governorate of Minya, for example, a group of 15 MPs from the People's Assembly and Shura Council have complained in a letter to the ruling party's secretary-general, Safwat El-Sherif, that the NDP's rules go against internal democracy and strip MPs of their powers. El-Sherif has said that lists of the NDP's candidates for the municipal elections will be complete by 3 March. In reaction to the much-publicised conflict between the NDP and the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's secular opposition parties also mobilised last week to step up their coordination before the elections, producing a list of jointly sponsored candidates. The parties includes the liberal-oriented Wafd and Democratic Front parties, as well as the leftist Tagammu and the Nasserist Party. However, according to Hussein Mansour, assistant secretary-general of Wafd, this coordination did not mean that there would be one list of candidates for all four parties. "Each party," he said, "will have its own candidates, but each will provide support for the candidates of all four parties." The leader of Wafd, Mahmoud Abaza, had earlier objected to suggestions that the Muslim Brotherhood join the partnership of secular opposition parties in contesting the local polls. Many independent political analysts, however, believe that the legal opposition parties are too weak to gain many seats in the municipal elections. Not only are they strapped for cash, but they are also isolated from the population, said Al-Ahram analyst Amr Hashem Rabie. Most people, Rabie said, still prefer to join the NDP in order to gain political prestige or in the pursuit of personal interest. This was a preferable option to joining the opposition parties, which were rife with sometimes acrimonious disputes and were always short of money, he said. "While NDP membership means prestige and personal gain, and the Brotherhood has money behind it, the secular opposition parties lack both," Rabie said.
