CAIRO: Two months away from parliamentary polls, Egypt’s opposition is deeply divided between those urging a boycott because they say the vote will be "rigged" and those pushing to make their voices heard through the ballot.
The camps are represented on the one hand by former UN nuclear weapons chief Mohamed ElBaradei who favors a boycott and on the other hand by the Muslim Brotherhood — the country’s largest opposition group — who plan to field candidates in the November polls.
ElBaradei and his supporters expect the election will be rigged in favor of President Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party, which currently holds the majority of parliamentary seats.
But those calling for participation say that, despite a predictable result, it is essential to make the "will of the people" heard and maintain even some parliamentary representation.
The division amongst the groups only weakens an already fragmented opposition, analysts say.
"The clear division of the opposition on whether to participate or boycott weakens its efficiency, which is already at a minimum," Ahmed Youssef Ahmed, head of the Arab Research Center in Cairo wrote in the independent daily Al-Shorouk.
The parliamentary election, which will be held in November and December, is seen as a warm-up exercise for presidential elections scheduled for next year.
Mubarak, 82, who has been in power for three decades, has not yet announced whether he will run for a fifth six-year term. His son Gamal, 46, is widely seen as the next possible successor.
The Muslim Brotherhood has not formally announced its decision to file candidates in the polls, but members of the Islamist group told AFP they intended to participate.
"The plan for the Muslim Brotherhood is to participate in the legislative elections as in all elections," the group’s spokesman Hamdi Hassan said.
"We have said that we will boycott the vote if there is unanimity among the opposition parties on such a boycott, but this is not the case. Instead, the opposition parties are gradually announcing their planned participation, so the position of the Muslim Brotherhood is to do likewise."
The liberal Wafd party last week announced it would participate in the November polls after a general assembly vote saw 504 members in favor compared with 407 against.
The Muslim Brotherhood, while officially banned, controls one fifth of parliament, after it fielded candidates as independents in the 2005 legislative polls.
"The Muslim Brothers have a long term interest in participating because it allows them to gain more supporters, to propagate their ideas and to consolidate their organization," said Mustafa Kamel Al-Sayyed, professor of political science at Cairo University.
But in general, the division of the opposition "will result in maintaining the low turnout" witnessed in 2005 (of around 25 percent), he told AFP.
For ElBaradei who has been calling for political reforms since stepping down in February as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a boycott would "put an end to the legitimacy of the regime."
ElBaradei has also called for constitutional amendments to allow independent candidates not affiliated to an existing party — such as himself — to run in presidential elections.
His call for a boycott has only been heeded by the small Al-Ghad party, whose founder Ayman Nour came a distant runner-up in the 2005 presidential elections, and one other small party the National Front.
Other groups such as the leftist Tagammu party and the Nasserist party have not yet announced their positions.
