CAIRO, 29 April 2005 — A large number of Muslim Brotherhood lawyers staged a sit-in yesterday at the Bar Association headquarters, Egypt’s most prestigious syndicate, calling for an investigation into the latest election results. Government sources said the syndicate will be placed under judicial sequestration and frozen by the government if the lawyers do not put an end to the ongoing strikes.
The protracted, two-stage campaign of the elections ended with the triumph of the current Nasserist President Sameh Ashour, who was re-elected for another four years, while the Muslim Brotherhood won 15 of the association’s 24-member council seats.
The results were a disappointment to the Muslim Brotherhood and their pro-government, presidential candidate Ragaai Attiya who won only 28,755 votes, while Ashour won 44,540 votes. The Brotherhood had unsuccessfully backed Attiya twice before in a bid to unseat Ashour, who is more popular with Egyptian lawyers.
Despite the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood had tried to diversify their list by including five lawyers with different political affiliations like Al Gamaa Al Islamiya, Al Wafd and the National Democratic Party, many lawyers said that they preferred to have a candidate who was not subject to the domination of a single group.
Over the past couple of weeks the Bar Association’s headquarters witnessed several clashes between Ashour’s supporters and the followers of the Brotherhood who staged round-the-clock sit-in strikes.
“It is crystal clear that the government interfered in the elections as they are afraid of the powers of the Muslim brothers,” said Mohammed Tosson, a Muslim Brotherhood lawyer and member of the Syndicate’s council.
“We will not stop the fight and will do our best to prove how dishonest the elections were and even if we do not succeed, Ashour has to remember that we are the majority in the council and our word will have to be respected,” he added.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s previous strategy was to win as many council seats as possible in order to marginalize any unsympathetic chairman of the council.
According to analysts, the early disputes that erupted between Ashour and the Muslim Brotherhood will lead the syndicate to be placed under judicial sequestration and frozen by the government, as was the case between 1996 to 2001.
“I’m afraid that things will become uncontrolled by both parties and then end up having the syndicate blocked by the government,” said Diaa Rashwan, an expert in Islamist movements at Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.
“The brothers have to realize that the government is waiting for any chance to interfere to prevent them from having control over the syndicate,” he told Arab News.
Rashwan said that the decade-old fight between Ashour and the Muslim Brotherhood had caused a decline in the syndicate’s performance.
“The council did not manage to get over its financial problems, low pensions and the services offered by the council and as long as there is an ideological division, those problems will not disappear,” Rashwan added.
