Yahoo News
Cairo
(AFP) - One party -- the banned Muslim Brotherhood -- will be
conspicuously absent from ballot papers Sunday when Egypt's voters head
to the polls for long-delayed parliamentary elections.
What had
been Egypt's main opposition group for decades fell foul of the
authorities after army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted Islamist
president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and was elected to succeed him last
year.Since overthrowing the senior Brotherhood figure, Sisi has overseen a deadly crackdown on the group in which hundreds were killed and thousands jailed, including most of the group's leaders.
The Brotherhood's disappearance from the public political scene is a far cry from a group, then officially banned but tolerated, which fielded candidates in parliamentary elections under former president Hosni Mubarak.
Then, campaigning under its own name, the Brotherhood took a whopping 44 percent of seats in the first free democratic elections following Mubarak's ouster in 2011.
That parliament was dissolved in June 2012, but the Brotherhood's popularity shone through days later when Morsi, a civilian, was elected, putting an end to six decades of presidents coming from military ranks.
But
while it has been wrested from Egypt's political arena, analysts say
this is unlikely to be the last voters see of the Brotherhood.
"The
Brotherhood will stay outside the political game as long as President
Sisi is in power," said Hazem Hosny, professor of political science at
Cairo University.
"The Brotherhood and the regime have gone too far in their confrontation."
Meanwhile, Sisi supporters are widely expected to sweep the parliamentary elections.
- History of repression -
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