CAIRO (Agencies)
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's biggest opposition group, said an arrest campaign targeting its members and efforts to block them from running in local polls could cause the country to "explode", but the regime considered the warning to be a “political threat”.
"Our approach as Muslim Brothers is a peaceful, legal and constitutional approach," the group's top leader, Mohamed Mahdi Akef, told reporters. "But we are not responsible for others. It is very likely that (people) explode ... people are fed up."
"This is an ... implicit invitation from the regime to the entire society to explode and use violence," senior Brotherhood leader Abdel-Moneim Aboul-Fotouh said.
"When you close down the channels of peaceful work, you only leave people to explode," he added.
But member of the political education committee of the ruling National Democratic Party (NPD) Magdi al-Daqqaq, hit back.
“Their “Muslim Brotherhood’s” talk of violent deeds is nothing but a threat that implies their readiness to return to their old ways (of violence),” Daqqaq told AlArabiya TV, in response to Akef’s statements.
More than 90 percent of the Brotherhood candidates were not allowed to register for next month's local council elections.
Akef told reporters that of the 10,000 people nominated by the group to compete for 4,500 local councils but only 5,754 were able to complete the necessary papers and of these a mere 498 were actually allowed to register.
Analysts see the Muslim Brotherhood as the only opposition group in the Arab country that is able to challenge the ruling NDP of President Hosni Mubarak, a U.S. ally in power since 1981.
The group says it wants to establish an Islamic state through peaceful, democratic means. The government says the group is banned but allows it to operate within limits.
Egypt postponed local council elections for two years in 2006 after the Brotherhood performed better than expected in the elections of the lower house of the parliament in 2005.
Thousands of Brotherhood members demonstrated in four Egyptian provinces on Thursday to protest against the government obstructing nominations for local council elections.
The White House, in a rare criticism of Egypt for policies against the Islamist group, said on Thursday it was concerned by opposition arrests. Cairo struck back, saying the criticism reflected a "lack of understanding" of Egypt. |
