Last Saturday the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood announced that they will be forming a new, "independent" political party to contest approximately 45 to 50% of the parliamentary seats at stake in Egypt’s September parliamentary election.
- There is still a long-lasting ban on religious groups which prohibits them from forming a political party directly linked to them. However, the Muslim Brotherhood has historically found ways to circumvent this ban by affiliating with one of Egypt's secular political parties or running their own independent candidates without any affiliation to a political party.
- This time the Muslim Brotherhood has formed a political party which they claim is not directly linked to them, but will coordinate with them and work with secular parties. The new political party will be known as the “Freedom and Justice Party”.
Today I want to analyze the Muslim Brotherhood’s decision to contest between 45 to 50% of Egypt’s parliamentary seats since many people are concerned about the prospect of the Muslim Brotherhood someday taking power in Egypt.
Before I begin, let’s first get a sense of how the Muslim Brotherhood has performed in past elections in Egypt. The following table shows how the Muslim Brotherhood has performed in past Egyptian parliamentary elections:
| Year | Seats | Seat % | Notes | Source |
| 1984 | 57 | 12.44 | Allied with the Wadf Party | |
| 1987 | 61 | 13.3 | Allied with Socialists & Socialist Labor Party | |
| 1990 | Boycotted Election |
| ||
| 1995 | 1 | Approx 0 |
| |
| 2000 | 15 | 3.3 | Government Crackdown on M.B. | |
| 2005 | 88 | 19.4 |
| |
| 2010 | 0 | 0 | M.B. claims vote was rigged | |
The year 2005 was clearly the Muslim Brotherhood’s most successful year. In that year the Muslim Brotherhood only contested 150 seats, but won over half of them (58.7%) and gained control of almost 1/5 of Egypt's parliament.
- This high win percentage suggests the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership is good at selecting locations where they believe they can win representation.
The Muslim Brotherhood is widely recognized as one of the most politically-organized forces in Egypt today. This combined with their immense popularity and a majority of Egyptian’s desire for strict Islam law suggests that the Muslim Brotherhood would have a good as chance as anyone to win control of the Egyptian parliament if they contested every seat in this upcoming election. However, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership does not seem to have the desire to seek control of the Egyptian parliament at this time...
- This can be demonstrated by the leadership’s decision to contest only between 45 to 50% of parliamentary seats (or between 233 to 259 seats of the 518 available seats). The Muslim Brotherhood will be unable to gain control of Egyptian parliament unless they somehow challenge half the seats in parliament and win every challenge, which is highly unlikely, or face a situation where get to form a minority government, which is also unlikely.
The probable, main reason why the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership is not pursing control of the Egyptian government in this upcoming election is that they are concerned that the current military rulers of Egypt will crackdown on them if they pursue a complete takeover.
- Although the Muslim Brotherhood has found a way to circumvent the ban on religious parties forming political parties, the fact that the ban remains in place suggests that Egyptian authorities are not ready to see a group like the Muslim Brotherhood take over the Egyptian government and will act to make sure that does not happen.
- The Muslim Brotherhood has been persecuted in past elections by Egyptian authorities even when they did not pose a threat to take control of the Egyptian government, so it is quite possible that their leadership is leery that they might be persecuted again if they pose a threat to take over control of Egypt at this time.
Another potential reason the Muslim Brotherhood may be hesitant to pursue control of the Egyptian government at this time is that the organization may want to see how they perform in a somewhat broader, yet still limited contest before they commit themselves to a complete nationwide attempt to win control of the Egyptian government.
- As I mentioned above, the Muslim Brotherhood only contested 150 seats or approximately one-third of the parliamentary seats in 2005. In addition, the Muslim Brotherhood only contested 30% of parliamentary seats in 2010. By contesting up to half the seats in this upcoming election the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership will get a better sense of how they'll truly perform on a nationwide basis in future elections.
- Given how well the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership did in 2005 to select parliamentary contests that they could win, it’s possible that the increased number of seats that they'll contest this time is an indication that Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership is more confident about their chances to win additional contests in this election.
This upcoming election is likely a test for the Muslim Brotherhood to see whether they can use democratic means to eventually gain power in Egypt.
- If Muslim Brotherhood-endorsed candidates win a large percentage of seats they contest you’ll probably see the Muslim Brotherhood pursue control of the Egyptian parliament and field a candidate for the Egyptian presidency in the next election regardless of whether a ban is still in place. Given that half of Egyptians view the lifting of the ban as an issue “very important” to them, the ban may not be around when the next election takes place.
- If Muslim Brotherhood-endorsed candidates do not do well or if Egyptian authorities persecute them again, you could see the organization pursue a more aggressive and perhaps non-peaceful way to take power...
Again, it will be important to watch what happens in Egypt’s upcoming election…
