Egypt’s first legislative elections :

Muslim Brotherhood poised for a big win

EGYPT: Egypt’s influential Muslim Brotherhood is bracing for a big win in the country’s first legislative elections since Hosni Mubarak was ousted. The Islamist movement, which has been banned for decades, stepped out of the shadows after the uprising in January that ended Mubarak’s 30-year-rule and saw power handed to a military junta led by the strongman’s defence minister.

The group’s endurance despite repeated crackdowns is likely to bear fruit in the elections that begin on Monday, with a large number of seats expected for its newly founded Freedom and Justice Party.

On Sunday, the movement once linked to political assassinations but now seen as a moderate force looked beyond the polls and said it should be asked to form a government if it emerges as the largest party.

“The future government is supposed to represent the people,” spokesman Mahmud Ghozlan told AFP ahead of the start of voting.

The ruling military council “must task the party which gains the biggest number of seats to form the next government,” he said.

The Muslim Brotherhood has been officially banned since the 1950s, but it counts hundreds of thousands of members and operates a vast network of social and religious outreach programmes across the country.

AFP