Islamists well placed for any post-Mubarak phase

The movement is active in the protest movement massing in Cairo, Alexandria and other cities on Tuesday in an attempt to persuade Mubarak that after 30 years it is time to go.
But decades of severe repression have taught the Brotherhood to move cautiously, and the movement is anxious to preserve the impression that the protesters are part of a broad-based movement of which the Islamists are just one part.

Ironically, if the Brotherhood does emerge with unprecedented power, some of the credit will be Mubarak’s. Like many other Arab autocrats friendly with the US and Europe, Mubarak has deliberately given the Islamist movement space, though on a tight leash, so that he could pose as the only plausible bastion against an Islamist government.

Although the government calls the Brotherhood a banned organisation, it has let the movement open offices, make statements and field candidates in parliamentary elections.
The US and European governments fell into the trap set by Mubarak and have refused to make contact directly with the Brotherhood, for fear of angering the Egyptian government.

Foreign governments could not even argue that the Brotherhood was a “terrorist” organisation, because the movement renounced violence in the 1950s. Throughout Mubarak’s presidency, it has struggled to take part in electoral politics. A byproduct of Mubarak’s strategy has been the ruthless elimination of all liberal democratic rivals who might appeal to foreign governments as alternatives to himself.

The most obvious example is Ghad Party founder Ayman Nour, who dared to stand against Mubarak in the country’s first multicandidate presidential elections in 2005.

Nour, who won at least 8 per cent of the vote and probably much more, spent the next few years in poor health in prison on what he says were fabricated charges of forging signatures.

In such a distorted political environment, where no free elections have taken place since at least 1952, it is impossible to judge the real popularity of the Brotherhood.