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The world hardly blinked when Egypt held municipal elections April 7-8. According to estimates by Al Jazeera, a meager 3 percent of voters turned out. The vast majority of Egyptians apparently were resigned to the fact that the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would sideline the opposition and sweep the 50,000 seats up for grabs with ease.
The NDP was in no mood to flirt with democracy this electoral go-round. In 2005, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) — Egypt’s largest and best organized opposition group — sent shockwaves through the Egyptian ruling party when it won 20 percent of seats in parliament. Fearful that the MB would make more gains, further threatening the Mubarak government’s hold on power, elections were postponed for two years in 2006. In another move to shore up the government, a new measure required independent candidates to secure support from 140 members of local councils and backing from members of parliament before running.
By the time local elections rolled around again in 2008, the Egyptian security apparatus was more than ready to keep the opposition at bay. A major crackdown was launched ahead of the election, during which hundreds of MB members were thrown in jail and/or physically barred from registering their candidacies and votes. This left the MB with little choice but to boycott the election in protest.
A Prickly Relationship with Cairo
The MB has had a turbulent history with the Egyptian state. At its inception in 1928 under Hassan al-Banna, the Islamist group’s founder, the group focused on serving as an alternative government to Egypt’s then-monarchy. It therefore put the bulk of its efforts into building schools, hospitals, welfare societies and factories to build up grassroots support and ground itself as a mass social movement. The MB found common cause with Gamal Abdul Nasser, a young army colonel at the time, collaborating with him to overthrow the Egyptian monarchy in a military coup in 1952.
But the days of army-Islamist cooperation quickly came to a close as it became clear that Nasser’s regime had little need for MB support once it consolidated its hold on power. Tensions between the two ideologically opposed forces came to a head in 1954, when the MB allegedly made a dramatic assassination attempt against Nasser. A severe crackdown swiftly followed, during which thousands of Islamist activists — including influential Islamist leader Sayyid Qutb, and later al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri — were tortured in prison. During this period, the seeds were planted for the rise of a jihadist movement that would later expand throughout — and beyond — the Islamic world.
At that point, the MB’s fate had been sealed. The secular governments of Nasser and Anwar Sadat had little to no tolerance for the group’s views on establishing an Islamic polity, and the distinction between the MB and a number of splinter jihadist groups became increasingly blurred. To ensure its long-term survival, the MB kept a safe distance from the rising jihadist movement in Egypt, and instead went down the political path. It gradually made inroads into parliament by fielding its candidates as independents, despite the government’s official ban on the group as a political movement.
‘We Must Be Patient’
The Mubarak government effectively has painted the MB as it exists today into a corner. Since the MB’s electoral boost in 2005, the Egyptian elite’s paranoia over regime survival has only intensified the state’s watch over the movement. Mostly working in plainclothes, Egyptian security forces monitor the group’s activities, from the 1,000-year-old Al-Azhar University in the heart of Cairo to the slums of the Nile Delta. Egypt’s geography deprives dissident groups of any hinterlands in which to escape government surveillance. Its population is densely packed along the Nile River, facilitating the state’s ability to stay two steps ahead of opposition actions. As a result, planned demonstrations are quickly put down, candidates and voters are easily barred from polling booths and MB members regularly are rounded up in mass arrests at a moment’s notice without charges.
In every discussion with MB leaders, the group’s response to the state’s actions is the same: “We must be patient.”
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