Egyptians Vote Today, but Islamic Opposition Group Is Barred

Egyptians are to vote on Wednesday in parliamentary elections that have emerged less as a challenge to President Hosni Mubarak's Government than a window on a widening rift between the Government and its outlawed Islamic opponents.

With the country's most influential Islamic organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, barred from competing as a political party, Mr. Mubarak's governing National Democratic Party is widely expected to maintain its commanding majority in Parliament, where it now holds 348 of 444 elective seats.

While Mr. Mubarak and his supporters have said they are committed to fair elections, the severe measures taken against the popular Islamic organization in recent weeks have underscored deep tensions that will not be measured in the polls.

"This election is like a play in the theater," Nabil Abdel-Fattah, an independent analyst at Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said in an interview today. "It certainly does not reflect political reality."

In the last week, dozens of Muslim Brotherhood leaders have been sentenced to prison terms and hundreds of their supporters arrested as part of what human rights campaigners say is a deliberate effort by the Government to disfranchise the country's largest political opposition movement.

With tacit backing from the West, the Government has defended the crackdown as a necessary step in its quest to suppress a campaign of violence by Islamic militants, who it says have drawn support and inspiration from the organization, which itself has long been outlawed.

Yet the Muslim Brotherhood has used the repressive measures as ammunition of its own as it renews its appeal to ordinary Egyptians, many of whom regard the Islamic organization as an important counterweight to what they consider a corrupt secular regime.

Permitted to compete only as independent candidates, members of the organization are running for only one-fourth of the seats and are not expected to play a large role in the outcome.

This election is the first in Egypt since 1987 that has not been boycotted by the major opposition parties, and television advertisements appearing on the Government-owned stations urge citizens to give their vote "to whoever deserves it."

But even as more than 4,000 candidates spent a final day on the hustings, the Government came under verbal attack from a prominent human rights organization, which declared itself "deeply troubled" about the climate in which the elections were taking place.

In a letter addressed to Mr. Mubarak, the New York-based Human Rights Watch/Middle East cited the measures taken against the Muslim Brotherhood, including the sentencing last week of 54 prominent members to prison terms of up to five years after a mass trial in military court.

Some of those sentenced had intended to run for seats in Wednesday's elections, and the human rights organization criticized their prosecution for nonviolent offenses as intended to keep them from taking part in the elections.

Even to students of Egyptian politics, many of the candidates' platforms this year are virtually indistinguishable, leaving their supporters to emphasize the symbols paired with names on Egyptian ballots.

Source: New York Times