Actually, the woman who wrote that article works for FT and BBC and knows her stuff - at the FT it's the editorial desk that does the headlines, often without the reporter's approval. That headline made my eyebrows shoot up too, though. But the article itself isn't bad.

Bollocks, the article is poorly written.

Dear L,

good to have you back.

When Heba Saleh writes

At the moment only parties which have five percent of the seats in parliament can compete in presidential elections. Only Mr Mubarak’s ruling party meets this condition.

she's not entirely correct. 34 of the 47 "independent" MPs are affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. In a parliament of 164 members they comprise about 20%. So all they have to do is to form a party that is - officially - not religiously based and they can field a candidate for the 2011 presidential elections.

On a not-quite-but-in-a-way-kind-of related note: What did you think of "Imarat Yaqoubian"?

--MSK

Um, there are 88 Brotherhood independents, and parliament has around 550 MPs. And every attempt by anyone with even a whisp of beard to form a political party has been met with a resounding la'a.

What gets me about the NDP 'reforms' is their astonishing stupidity. At the moment you have 88 Brotherhood members in parliament, visible and operating as a more-or-less loyal opposition (of course, there are suspicions). So the NDP wants to kick all of these people out, and thus encourage them to think up devious plans and clever tricks from political limbo. It's almost as if the NDP wants a revolutionary Islamic movement on its hands...

Yes, Heba Saleh is hardly a "chickie stringer" - she's been working for the FT, BBC and others for ages (including a long sting at the BBC in London) and penned the last ICG report on Saudi Arabia. I very much doubt that stringers or even correspondents for the FT get to write their headlines in general, too. As for the conservative language, the FT is not the Economist, it likes to report more than opine and made the decision over a year ago to be less political and return to its business-minded roots. I don't like "journalese" either, but the article is informative enough for its audience, especially as there are quite complicated amendments (and 34 of them!)

MSK - the Egyptian parliament has 444 elected members, of which 89 are "independents" from the MB, i.e. about 19.6% once you add the 10 appointed MPs. Forming a political party is not that easy, most have been denied over the past two decades on the grounds that parties with similar platforms already exists. I also doubt that MB MPs would be granted permission to form a party.

More on all of this at arabist.net soon, once I recover from a muscle spasm that has my neck in deep pain. Happy new year to all.

Dear Issandr,

yeah, sorry for the mix-up on the MP numbers.

Do you think that the MB and its MPs could "take over" an already existing party & thus be able to field a presidential candidate? Of course, a lot of water will flow down the Nile 'till 2011 ...

Salaamtak,

--MSK

Whether or not Saleh is a stringer, the article looks like a press release with a little 'some say' criticism thrown in at the end for good measure. Too much of that going around, lazy journalism.

"Do you think that the MB and its MPs could "take over" an already existing party & thus be able to field a presidential candidate?"

They've tried that - in 1984 with the Wafd and in 1987 with Hizb al-Amal (for Parliamentary elections, since presidentials weren't multicandidate back then); the regime indulged them for a bit and then cracked down again in the early 1990s. Several MBs tried to form a political party without religious reference, and they were turned down repeatedly; even the decision to tolerate them running as independents but with a shared slogan and symbol in last year's Parliamentary elections was very much at the govt's pleasure, and lo and behold their main leaders were arrested en masse when they won too many seats even with careful regime rigging.

Bottom line: the regime will find a way to keep the Brothers out if it wants to.

blah blah stringer. The article is as Klaus said, something worthy of Arab News.

In belated reply to MSK: like SP says. In fact I think the MB will have a harder time infiltrating an existing party over the next few years than it had in the 1980s, where it was necessarily a strategy that the regime was indulging (especially considering the Wafd has unfortunately never been that independent of the regime.)

Right now I am predicting that the next parliament will contain fewer MB MPs than the current one, although of course 2011 is a long time away.