COMMENT: In the first electoral contests following the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, the highly organized Muslim Brotherhood has successfully shepherded into being constitutional changes that were opposed by the young leaders of the youth movement.
In my editorial observations on the Piggy-Back Coup, I quoted former Speaker of the House of Representatives John McCormack (D‑MA), who co-chaired the McCormack/Dickstein committee that investigated the 1934 coup attempt in the United States. “An organized minority can always defeat an unorganized majority.”
Are we witnessing the beginning of the ascension of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt?
“Fears Egypt Vote to Benefit Islamists” by Jailan Zayan [AFP]; Google News; 3/21/2011. [1]
Egypt’s first exercise in democracy in decades was hailed as a success on Monday, but the result of a key referendum has raised fears in some quarters that Islamists will hijack looming elections.
Egyptians on Saturday voted 77% in favour of proposed constitutional amendments intended to guide the Arab world’s most populous nation through new presidential and parliamentary elections within six months.
The Muslim Brotherhood threw its huge influence and grassroots organisation behind a “yes” vote, although youth groups that spearheaded the protests that forced Hosni Mubarak to resign last month had called for a “no” vote.
They argued the timetable set by the military was too tight for them to organize at grassroots level, that the Muslim Brotherhood would benefit and that the changes to the Mubarak-era constitution were too limited. . . .
. . . “The referendum, while it was free of fraud, was not free of ‘influence’, especially by the Muslim Brotherhood and the religious trend in general,” wrote Suleiman Gouda in the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm.
“The mosques were used by these groups to influence the voters,” he said.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition movement in the country and officially banned in the Mubarak era, used its new found freedom — and organisational skills — to campaign for a “yes” vote.
The group, and other more fundamentalist religious movements, presented the “yes” vote as a religious duty, while many at polling stations said they voted “yes” for the sake of “stability” rather than religious inclinations. . . .