Egypt opposition to contest polls despite clampdown

The supreme guide of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood pledged on Wednesday that the country's leading opposition movement would still contest local elections in April despite a quickening crackdown on its members.
Egyptian police arrested another 90 members of the group earlier in the day, bringing to more than 170 the number of Islamists rounded up ahead of the key polls.
But Brotherhood supreme guide Mohammed Mehdi Akef insisted: "We are going to take part in the municipal elections and we are going to call on the whole people to take part.
"Since the Brotherhood's gains in the 2005 parliamentary elections, the government has been riding roughshod on everyone's freedoms, not just our assets."
Akef was alluding to the government's targeting of the opposition group's finances in the crackdown it has conducted in recent months.
The Brotherhood had previously been largely tolerated by the authorities, although it remains outlawed and was forced to field its candidates in the 2005 polls as independents.
Wednesday's arrests took place in Brotherhood members' homes in and around Cairo as well as in several towns south of the capital, a security source said.
"They were arrested for belonging to an illegal organisation," the source told AFP, adding that those held included engineers, accountants, doctors and students.
On Sunday police arrested 51 Brotherhood members "for activities related to the municipal elections," the source told AFP. "Any Muslim Brotherhood member caught preparing for these elections will be detained."
Another 36 Muslim Brothers were arrested on February 14.
Akef said the intensifying crackdown would serve only to "push the movement to confront the dictatorship."
"The Muslim Brothers have shown patience but it's got us nowhere," he said.
The municipal polls were postponed for two years in 2006, in what observers said was a way to avoid another success for the opposition group.
Traditionally controlled by the ruling National Democratic Party, the local elections are expected to draw fierce competition after a constitutional amendment was passed in 2005 requiring independent presidential candidates to secure the backing of municipal councillors.