Egyptian National Alliance for Reform

If it's true that the Muslim Brotherhood is forming a unified "National Alliance for Reform" with Kefaya and other opposition movements - which is being widely reported in the Arab media but which has hardly been mentioned in the American media that I can find -   then it seems pretty darned significant to me.

I'm not quite sure what to make of it yet though.  Al-Arabiya reported it like this:  "First reformist alliance of its kind includes the Muslim Brothers and the Communist Party and Copts," and also reports that the MB plans to establish an Islamic Action Front party (like in Jordan).   Al-Hayat's headline today has the Brothers "announcing a National Front."  Al-Jazeera's headline was "Egypt's Brotherhood calls for forming an opposition alliance," which makes it a future-tense proposition rather than a done deal. 

Color me confused right now... one of our Egyptian friends, or someone at the Arabist Network, needs to get out of Ayman Nour's courthouse and go find out for us.

UPDATE:  I've just heard that the press conference formally announcing it actually began almost at the exact moment I was writing this.  So now I know more about it... but not what's going to happen!

Comments

[windinthewhistle]

Vaguely on-topic:

This morning I heard that the elections law had been declared unconstitutional, which sounded like elections ( about which I have been trying to discern an actual date for some time ), legitimate or no, would be put off a bit.

A couple hours ago, I got word from partners in Egypt that dates had been announced, September 1st and September 18th ... and that parliament would just have to fix all those unconstitutional ingredients ASAP so that campaigning could begin as scheduled on July 19th.

Anyone (in Cairo, especially) have any insight into this? My life (well, at least my logistics for the next fews months) depends on the answer ...

ww

[SP]

An Egyptian blog that has reference to this effort by the MB is www.manalaa.net. They have a statement which looks like it was sent by the MB. There was an attempted coordination meeting last week, from what I heard, but this week's meeting is supposed to be going on right now. I don't know if anything has come of it yet. One of the younger Kefaya spin-off people mentioned yesterday that the Left is divided on the issue of working with Islamists.

[Mohammed]

the national alliance forreform is mainly ikhwan with few public figures. kefaya and the 3 major opposition parties ( nasseri, tagammu, wafd) didn't join it..
earlier, the ikhwan said that kefaya is joining the alliance, but kefaya issued a statement saying that it didn't...
there's a heated debate at kefaya forum where paricipants discuss the option of alliance with the ikhwan..

[Nur al-Cubicle]

Here's the blurb from L'Orient -Le Jour:

The Muslim Brotherhood has issued a call to civil disobediance defying Hosni Mubarek two months befoe the presidential election. The party leaders did not say exactly what they meant by civil disobediance, a weapon which they have often brandished but never used.

However, the organization still has not suceeded in rallying the other heavy-hitters of Egyptian politics. Among Egypt’s legal political parties only the center-right Wafd Party may join the National Alliance for Reform and Change, created Thursday to contest the election of President Mubarek. The NARC is comprised of a constellation of small formations with multiple allegiances, some of ephemeral duration, around the Muslim Brotherhood, which for many years has been denied recognition by the state.

The Tagammou (Nassirite Marxist left) and the Nassirite Party (Arab nationalist), traditionally hostile to the MB-- energetically suppressed by Gamal Abdel Nasser--did not attend the NARC's founding meeting. These two parties are allied with Wafd in another movement urging democratic reforms.

One thousand activists assembled by the MB participated in the creatin of NARC. The MB’s representation in Parliament is merely 19 out of 454 seats. The MB announced its political « new look » last year with support for pluralism, democracy and power-sharing, a transformation to make them palatable as a governmental partner.

But the MB has been the target of official hostility after organizing protests in Cairo and in the interior of the country, in violation of the State of Emergency declared in the aftermath of the assassination of Anwar Sadat by Islamists. Several hundred MB members were arrested and placed in preventative detention before being released. However, most of its national leaders, arrested in the same wave, are still behind bars, including Mahmoud Ezzat, 64, Number 2 of the organization (known by his supporters as the "man of steel"), and the new generation of cadres, Issam al-Aryan, Omar Darrag, and Hamdi Shaheen, who are being groomed to replace the « founding fathers » --all in their 70s.

The Muslim Brotherhood shares most of the demands of the other political parties and associations among civil society: Rejection of the candidacy of Mr. Mubarak for a fifth term, an end to the State of Emergency, the opening up of state media to the opposition, reform of the elections law, separation of powers between the executive and judicial branches, the granting of authorization for more political parties and more independent journalists. Some parties are demanding a parliamentary government to substitute the ultra-presidential state, which grants excessive powers to the Head of State to the detriment of national representation.

[Nur al-Cubicle]

16:58 60 Egyptian journalists demonstrated Sunday in downtown Cairo demanding an end to state control of media. Karim Yahya, one of the founders of the group, "Journalists for Change" organized the protest.

Anti-riot police kept a discrete distance and remained at the margins of the protest, in contrast to their interventions in past demonstrations. Most of the journalists present were employees of state media, worried over Egyptian laws permitting the jailing of reporters for violating publication rules.

President Hosni Moubarak says he is in favor of changing the law but has not presented draft legislation to parliament.