CAIRO: The Muslim Brotherhood announced their participation in Mohamed ElBaradei’s campaign “Together for Change,” which aims to garner public support for a statement of seven demands for political reform.
The former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited the Brotherhood’s guidance office on Saturday and met with the head of the group’s parliamentary bloc, Saad El-Katatny.
Both ElBaradei and El-Katatny denied that their meeting was a response to the Shoura Council mid-term elections. But both agreed that last week’s elections were "proof of the corruption of the governing regime."
The Brotherhood failed to win any seats in the elections of the Upper House of Parliament that took place last week. It said the vote was rigged.
In a press conference following the meeting, ElBaradei renewed his support for the Brotherhood’s right to form a political party or of political participation in a civil state. He said El-Katatny told him that is what the group is aiming for.
ElBaradei said he doesn’t mind meeting the leader of the group or anyone in Egypt who wants to participate in change and reform.
"We agreed to arrange a meeting between the leader of the Brotherhood and ElBaradei to discuss the next steps needed to call for political and democratic reform," El-Katatny said.
He told Daily News Egypt that he agreed with ElBaradei during their meeting that the seven demands in his statement are the framework governing "all political powers during the coming period."
The Brotherhood will participate in the campaign to gather signatures of approval of the demands, in coordination with the National Coalition for Change, founded by ElBaradei, according to El-Katatny.
"We haven’t set a specific number of signatures, but we want to collect the largest number of signatures in the coming period," he added.
Activists from the National Coalition for Change, supporters of ElBaradei, April 6th Youth movement and now the Muslim Brotherhood are all collecting signatures for ElBaradei’s seven demands.
The demands include annulling the emergency law, allowing complete judicial supervision over the elections, allowing international and local organizations to monitor the elections, the nomination of presidential candidates without any restrictions, limiting presidential terms to two, and giving Egyptian abroad the right to vote.
