Protesters run from tear gas fired by riot police during clashes along a road leading to the Interior Ministry, near Tahrir Square in Cairo on Wednesday. )AMR ABDALLAH DALSH/REUTERS
Egypt's election, which is to start Monday, is as much a referendum on the powerful Muslim Brotherhood as it is about a transition to civilian rule.
Until this past weekend, it was assumed that the election was the Muslim Brotherhood's to lose. Now it appears they may do just that. The Islamist movement's recent political strategy to co-operate with the country's interim military leadership rather than to criticize it is effectively splitting the organization, and may well cost its Freedom and Justice Party the victory.
It started with the Brotherhood leaders' decision this week not to join protesters back in Tahrir Square calling for the handover of power by the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). Now it seems there is also a decision to support a new military-appointed government that will be led by presidential candidate Amr Moussa. "There have been threats of mass resignation by Brotherhood youth over this," says Karim Alrawi, an Egyptian political analyst who has charted the Brotherhood for years.
The Brotherhood leadership is said to support this latest move, which will keep the SCAF in command until next year, in order to ensure the election goes ahead next week.
Why the sellout, young members demand to know, even as many resign this week from the party.
"I am an Egyptian; I am a Muslim, and I want to vote for Freedom and Justice," said a young man in Tahrir Square this week, "but my heart is with these people here [the protesters]and I am against the military rulers. I cannot support the Ikhwan [the Muslim Brotherhood]any longer."
At its simplest, the movement's leaders believe the party, with the whole Muslim Brotherhood organization behind it, can come out on top in this election. The longer the vote is delayed, however, the better the chance that other parties will close the gap, they say.
But there are deeper reasons for the position the Brotherhood is taking, born in the organization's painful history.
"The older members of the Brotherhood recall how [Gamal Abdul]Nasser in 1954 created a situation where demonstrations turned to riots, which he used as an excuse to postpone elections indefinitely," says Mr. Alrawi, a human-rights activist and playwright now teaching at Simon Fraser University in British Colombia. "Nasser then clamped down on the Brotherhood and kept the military in power … for 60 years."
Today's leaders, he explained, "are reluctant to be drawn into the unrest so close to the elections that they are likely to do well in." They don't want the military to have any Nasser-style excuse to postpone the vote.
"The Brotherhood youth do not share that sense of history," says Mr. Alrawi, "and so are more willing to support the current protests, feeling a fraternity with the secular youth in Tahrir with whom they stood shoulder to shoulder in January and February."
And the organization's Freedom and Justice Party, "being more political and pragmatic than the leadership of the Brotherhood society, sees votes being lost and, so, is anxious to be visible in the square," says Mr. Alrawi. "This has led to friction between them."
In short, there now appears to be a three-way tug of war with the youth on one side, the political party on another and the old leadership of the Brotherhood on the third. As a result, the party is bleeding members and supporters.
The political party needs the support of the youth group to canvass and get the vote out, especially when so many of the voters are under the age of 30. So "the party leaders are more willing to side with the youth against the old leadership," Mr. Alrawi says.
There have even been threats of resignation from the ruling Guidance Council of the Brotherhood, Mr. Alrawi said. "It's been publicly denied," he said, "but there still are genuine threats of major splits.
"The terrors of the Nasser years [the tortures in prison camps in the desert and years of exile]still cause the old leadership nightmares," he says.
"The splits are very real," said an adviser to presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, himself a former member of the Brotherhood's leadership.
"One of the party leaders wanted to apologize to the people this week for not standing with them in the square. But 'the banker' would not hear of it," he said, referring to Khairat al-Shater, the powerful deputy chairman of the Brotherhood, and its chief financier.
Mr. al-Shater appears to have calculated that the loss of supporters in the short term is smaller than the loss would be if the election is postponed.
"He's the one who calls the shots, and he wants nothing to stand in the way of going to the polls next week," the political adviser said.
Indeed, despite the unrest in Tahrir Square, the Muslim Brotherhood has not stopped campaigning.
"They issued a half-hearted statement on Monday that they would not campaign in central Cairo, and that's it," said a business consultant with excellent political contacts. "The campaign continues, and their preparations to swamp polling stations on election continue unabated."
Tuesday's statement by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the interim Egyptian leader, announcing an earlier handover of power to civilian authorities and keeping to the election schedule next week, was hammered out with the Muslim Brotherhood.
"It clearly delivers what the Brothers want," said the consultant, noting that the military authorities are counting on the Brothers to continue to support SCAF in its executive role.
But whether there will be enough support to give the Brotherhood a plurality in the election is now very much in doubt.