[Al Arabiya Latest] Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood on Monday elected a new executive bureau, but the vote revealed serious internal divisions that threaten to weaken the country's largest opposition group.Some senior members said the elections were illegitimate because they violated the Brotherhood's internal rules. Most members of the group's shura, the council responsible for mapping policies, nonetheless agreed to go ahead.
"The opinion of the majority was that the elections to the guidance bureau be carried out now," outgoing leader Mahdi Akef said in a statement on the Brotherhood's website.
The results signaled an end to the reformist trend within the Brotherhood, political analyst Khalil el-Anani said.
"These results indicate an internal coup d'etat against the reformist camp of the Brotherhood," he told Reuters. "Most of the new members are over 50 years old and there is no representation of Brotherhood's youth."
The group's number two Mohammed Habib and reformist Abdel Moneim Abul Futuh were not among the new 16-member executive bureau known as Guidance Bureau, according to results published in a statement and obtained by AFP.
The list is made up of "the leaders of the conservative trend," Amr Shoubaky, an analyst with the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies told AFP.