CAIRO (IPS) – As Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood gears up to contest November parliamentary elections, some analysts note the relatively few gains made by the Brotherhood-led opposition over the last five years in an assembly dominated by the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP).

Mohammed Badie is the Muslim Brotherhood’s eighth leader since its formation in 1928.

“Despite its relatively large presence in the last parliament, the opposition was unable to realize many tangible achievements due to the ruling party’s stranglehold on the assembly,” Amr Hashem Rabie, expert in parliamentary affairs at the semi-official Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, told IPS.

In 2005 elections, the Brotherhood managed to capture an unprecedented 88 seats in the 454-seat parliament, despite numerous instances of electoral fraud on the part of the NDP. An additional 28 seats were picked up by independent candidates and representatives of secular opposition parties, giving the combined opposition a total of 116 seats – roughly one quarter of the assembly.

Despite these unexpected victories, however, the number of seats held by non-NDP representatives still fell short of the more than one-third minority needed to affect legislation.

“We might have had the largest opposition bloc in parliamentary history in terms of numbers, but in practical terms, we faced an NDP majority that simply rubberstamped everything the party wanted – regardless of its value to the Egyptian public,” Saad al-Husseini, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Brotherhood’s bloc in parliament, told IPS.

Over the last five years, Brotherhood MPs tabled 17,500 requests for information from government ministers, 5,000 parliamentary recommendations and 975 draft laws. Virtually all of the latter were summarily rejected by the ruling party majority.

“It’s not the fault of the Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc, which tried very hard to affect legislation,” said Rabie. “Brotherhood parliamentarians, along with other opposition and independent MPs, simply lacked the one-third minority necessary to be effective.

“Nevertheless, the larger-than-usual opposition presence in the last parliament did manage to force heated discussions of NDP-proposed legislation, even if that legislation was inevitably approved by the ruling party majority,” added Rabie. “That in and of itself could be considered an achievement.”

Hamdi Hassan, official spokesman for the Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc, told IPS: “We would have had a much greater influence if Egypt was a functioning democracy instead of a dictatorship.”

Yet despite the opposition’s numerical disadvantage in the assembly, Brotherhood officials point to a handful of parliamentary accomplishments achieved within the last five years.

“When parliament renewed Egypt’s longstanding Emergency Law earlier this year, Brotherhood representatives demanded that the law be amended to limit its application to crimes of drug trafficking and terrorism,” al-Husseini said. “Brotherhood MPs also succeeded in thwarting the sale of several important state-owned assets to private investors under the rubric of Egypt’s privatization drive.”

“What’s more, our opposition in parliament pre-empted the sale of state land to politically-connected businessmen and the sale of Egyptian natural gas to Israel at less than international prices,” he added. “And, perhaps most importantly, Brotherhood MPs succeeded in providing public services for their constituents by establishing hospitals and schools in most of their respective electoral districts.

“But we lost some major battles,” al-Husseini conceded. “We failed to stop the ruling party from altering the constitution in its favor in 2007, even though we launched a concerted campaign against the move.”

According to Hassan, the constitutional changes, which effectively did away with judicial oversight of elections, “were made expressly to prevent opposition candidates – especially Brotherhood candidates – from winning such a large number of seats in parliament ever again.”

Rabie did, however, have some criticisms of the Muslim Brotherhood’s overall parliamentary performance.

“Of the group’s 80-plus sitting MPs, only about 25 were very active,” he said. “This contrasts with the 1987-1990 parliament, in which the Brotherhood had only 30 MPs – including such prominent group members as Mehdi Akef, Ma’moun al-Hodeibi and Essam al-Arian – all of whom were much more active. In fact, that was the most active opposition bloc in the history of the People’s Assembly.”

As for the parliamentary achievements cited by al-Husseini, Rabie said these represented “victories for the entire opposition, both inside and outside parliament and across the political spectrum, all of which played a part – not just the Muslim Brotherhood.”

“That being said, the ruling party continues to be particularly hostile to the Brotherhood and will do whatever it must in order to foil the group’s parliamentary initiatives,” Rabie added. “Any draft legislation proposed by the Brotherhood was rejected out of hand by the NDP majority, simply because it had been proposed by the Brotherhood.”

For this reason, Rabie is skeptical about the group’s prospects in upcoming parliamentary elections.

“Unlike the 2005 elections, the Brotherhood is unlikely to win more than ten seats in November,” he said. “The regime can ensure this outcome by simply rigging the vote as it has done so often in the past.”

“Judging from so many past elections, the NDP will no doubt fix the upcoming parliamentary races in its favor,” agreed Hassan. “The only thing that can prevent this is if the Egyptian people choose to register their discontent with the status quo by voting en masse against ruling party candidates.”