No sooner had this notion been floated, apparently by a group of (officially independent) Assembly members, than it was denied by the MB secretary-general, Mahmoud Ezzat.
He said of a recent high-level party meeting: Some members of the People s Assembly from the group spoke about that issue but no official steps have been taken.
He added that the MB has demanded official party status for 30 years, and will continue to do so. But he expected that the new political parties committee, charged with issuing licenses to political groups, would continue to block the Islamist MB.
The MB operates in a strange half-light. Everyone knows who the leaders are, but they cannot be identified with the group, for their own safety. Only today, 20 MB members were arrested after dawn prayer on the fourth day of the Eid al-Adha holiday.
The 20 were allegedly dragged from their homes in three provinces of the Nile delta. A security official said they had been arrested for membership of the banned Brotherhood and possession of books and publications containing its ideological hostile to the regime .
There has been a spate of such arrests since a demonstration by young MB members at al-Azhar University in Cairo last month.
Derek Brown is a former Middle East correspondent for The Guardian, and is currently a freelance analyst and commentator.
