CAIRO, 17 November 2005 — Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said yesterday it had won 34 seats in the first phase of legislative elections, a major advance for the Islamist group.

Its candidates, campaigning under the banner “Islam is the solution” in the three-phase election, are aiming for an overall tally of between 50 and 70 seats in the 454-seat Parliament.

Spokesman Hassan El-Eryan said the movement had already doubled its representation in Parliament, winning 20 percent of the seats being contested in the first round, following a run-off election on Tuesday.

It held a total of 15 seats from the previous poll in 2000, while two more phases of this election have yet to be held.

Brotherhood candidates, who form the major opposition in Egypt, stand as independents to circumvent the problem of illegal status although this excludes the movement from figuring officially in the results.

“It’s a great victory for the Muslim Brothers,” said Mohammed Al-Sayyed Said, deputy president of Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies.”

The voting on Tuesday in Cairo and seven other regions was for a total of 164 seats. It was marked by violence and claims of vote-rigging by President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party (NDP).

Overnight, some 50 supporters of independent candidates set ablaze the local NDP headquarters in Imbaba, a poor district of Cairo, police said, adding that no one was hurt.

Student Yusef Aziz, who witnessed the incident, told AFP that judges had initially announced two independents had won the local seats but 30 minutes later changed the result to give victory to NDP candidates.

The judges said some ballot boxes had been forgotten in the original counting.

“Irregularities occurred in several constituencies,” said Egypt’s Human Rights Organization.

NDP candidates won nearly 70 seats, with between 45 and 50 so-called independents, who do not officially represent the party, expected to rally to it in Parliament.

Coptic Christian figures said yesterday that it was time for the Brotherhood to spell out its political agenda.

“Now that they have a high score, it is time for them to clarify their position toward the Copts of Egypt, something which they have not done to date,” said George Ishak, a leader of the opposition group Kefaya.

Munir Fakhri Abdel Nour, an official of the liberal party Al-Wafd, said the Brotherhood “must now accept the democratic rules of the game and accept that the state is not founded on religion”.

Abdel Nour said the result was a “protest vote” by the Egyptian electorate.

Tuesday’s first round run-off followed Egypt’s first ever-contested presidential election in September which saw Mubarak returned to office in a landslide.

While the presidential election triggered an unprecedented national debate on reform, the legislative polls are a very local and personalized affair where votes are lost and won with promises for micro-projects, jobs and bribes.

The second round, which includes the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, is due to start on Nov. 20. Voting wraps up on Dec. 7.