By Heba Fahmy
The Muslim Brotherhood condemned security violations against the group in a press conference Monday, calling on people to defend the right to vote for their candidate of choice on election day, Nov. 28.
“They want to terrorize us and force us to withdraw from the elections,” MB-affiliated independent candidate in Alexandria and current MP Hussein Ibrahim said.
“We refuse this, we will continue to fight against this terrorism until our last breath,” he added.
The Brotherhood cited the government’s recent crackdown on the group’s candidates and supporters in Alexandria, Gharbeya and Fayoum governorates. The number of Brotherhood members detained since the group announced its participation in the upcoming parliamentary elections has reached 1,206.
“More than 60 Brotherhood members have been detained in Fayoum, 15 others were detained in Beni Suef for 15 days,” said Sherif Abdel-Rahman, member of the Egyptian coalition to monitor the elections in Upper Cairo.
“Two children were detained including Youssef Mohamed Teleb, who is only 10 years old, and was detained for two days. When we visited him, he was in a very bad state because of the way he was treated,” Abdel-Rahman told Daily News Egypt.
Abdel-Rahman added that four MB candidates were scratched off the registration list in Fayoum without any justification.
Mohamed from Mansoura district, 10 years old, also said he was detained for eight hours for broadcasting songs from a taxi campaigning for the Brotherhood. “They kept me in jail with the rest of the convicts from 2 pm to 10 pm.”
Ibrahim and three other Brotherhood candidates were removed from the registration list in Alexandria without being given a reason.
“The rigging of the elections has already started in Alexandria,” Ibrahim said, accusing security forces of throwing tear gas in people’s balconies in Alexandria during a confrontation with MB supporters.
“Egypt’s president in 2011 is supposed to swear allegiance in front of the People’s Assembly — how will that happen in front of an assembly that lacks legitimacy,” he added.
The head of the MB parliamentary bloc, Saad El-Katatni, said that he has been prevented from campaigning and meeting with the people. “As the head of MB parliamentary bloc, the oppression I’ve been subjected to — from the beginning of registering for elections — is beyond all reason.” he said.
El-Katatni, a current MP, said he was asked to provide official documents proving that he’s politically active. “My lawyer just informed me that all my campaign posters and banners have been torn down,” he said, claiming that he’s followed by two police officers whenever he leaves home.
“The aim from the campaign is to terrorize people and prevent them from supporting Brotherhood candidates in the coming elections,” he said.
“We are raising people’s awareness about these violations and asking them to defend their right to vote for the candidate they choose,” El-Katatni told Daily News Egypt.
The Brotherhood discussed their slogan “Islam is the solution” and its use in the elections.
“It isn’t a considered a religious slogan because it doesn’t discriminate against any other religion, it represents the concept that the solution to any problem drives from Islam,” MB prominent leader Essam El-Erian said.
“Our political program is driven from this slogan, and all the slogans used by the Brotherhood candidates are driven from the Brotherhood’s main slogan ‘Islam is solution,’” he said, adding that MB candidates have the freedom to use any slogan they see fit for their district.
The Supreme Electoral Commission (SEC) said that candidates using religious slogans would be eliminated. The MB regularly used this slogan until the SEC instated a ban on religions slogans.
In 2005, the Administrative Court ruled in favor of MB candidates using the slogan “Islam is the Solution” when campaigning for parliamentary elections, citing Article 2 of the Constitution, which states, “Islam is the religion of the state. Arabic is its official language, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (sharia).”
“Islam … guarantees the rights of all other religions and people according to … the constitution,” Mohamed Moursi, member of the MB’s Executive Bureau, said.
“There is no judge, Muslim or Christian, that can issue a verdict stipulating that this slogan is illegal with good conscious; and it doesn’t violate Article 5 of the Constitution that speaks about citizenship,” he added.
El-Erian said, “The NDP have used mosques and churches to campaign for their candidates and yet the SEC has not taken any procedure against them.”
Regarding international monitoring of elections, El-Erian said that the Brotherhood supports the United Nations or any international organization’s supervision while rejecting the idea of a specific country monitoring Egypt’s elections.
“This has become an international right that guarantees democratic and fair elections and we completely support it, but for a specific country like the United States to use monitoring the elections as an excuse to interfere in Egypt’s interior affairs and force Egypt’s organizations to violate the integrity and transparency of the elections, that’s unacceptable.”
El-Erian said that the government rejects international monitoring “fearing” that they will get caught red-handed in rigging the elections.
The MB has 130 candidates running in 16 governorates and more than 10 of their candidates have been eliminated from the registration list.
Candidates of the MB, which is an officially banned group, typically run as independents. In 2005, the MB won 88 seats — almost 20 percent of the 445 seats, which established the group as the largest opposition group in the PA at the time.
