MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

Like I said, it’s only a matter of time …

By Roula Khalaf – “You can forgive Egyptians for concluding that the Muslim Brotherhood cannot be trusted.

After claiming that it is not trying to control parliament, that it favours consensus over monopoly and that it would not field a candidate in the presidential elections, Egypt’s most powerful political movement has broken all its promises.

Scepticism about its intentions was already rife last week after the Brotherhood packed the elected panel charged with drafting the post-revolution constitution with devotees. The move provoked a walkout from the panel by representatives of liberal parties, the constitutional court, the Coptic Church, and even al-Azhar, the centre of Sunni religious authority.

Then the Brotherhood dropped a bombshell at the weekend with a decision to nominate Khairat al-Shater, its strategist and most formidable leader, as its candidate in the May 23 presidential election.

The movement’s brazen push for power is a dramatic departure from its decades-old approach of cautious, gradual politics and its more recent preference for sharing in the responsibility of ruling Egypt’s 80m people.

‘It’s a turning point in the history of the Muslim Brotherhood,’ says Dia Rashwan, analyst at Cairo’s Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.” Read more at FT.Com.