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| Africa North | |||
| Egypt main opposition group to contest election | |||
| 2010-10-10 | |||
| CAIRO - Egypt’s biggest opposition movement the Muslim Brotherhood said on Saturday it would take part in a parliamentary election next month being seen as a test of government restrictions on political opponents. The party will field candidates for a third of seats in parliament — 169 of 508 seats on offer — Mohamed Badie, head of the Brotherhood, told a news conference in Cairo. The Brotherhood won 88 out of 454 seats in a 2005 legislative election, its best result. Next month’s election in the Arab world’s most populous country comes before an uncertain presidential election in 2011. President Hosni Mubarak, 82, has not said if he will stand for a sixth six-year term. If he does not, many Egyptians expect his son Gamal or a member of the country’s political and military establishment to stand for president. The Brotherhood said it would announce its final list of candidates for the November parliamentary poll in a few weeks’ time. The number of candidates would be similar to 2005. Some analysts have speculated the government would stop the movement contesting as many constituencies this time around. “The Muslim Brotherhood is a big group and if we wanted to compete for the biggest number of seats, we could have,” said Mohamed el-Katatni, head of the movement’s parliamentary bloc. “However, we see that the regime opposes the Brotherhood and this causes political uncertainty which we want to avoid in the coming period,” he added.
Many opposition groups, and some Brotherhood members, have called for a boycott of the elections.
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| Posted by:Steve White |