CAIRO (Reuters) - Thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members demonstrated at government offices in three Egyptian provinces on Sunday to protest against the government obstructing Brotherhood nominations for municipal elections.
Brotherhood and security sources said the group's members held demonstrations in Port Said, Tanta and Alexandria to protest against what the group says is a government policy of preventing Brotherhood members standing in local elections in April by refusing to accept their nomination papers.
In the Nile Delta town of Tanta, group members led by Brotherhood parliamentarians chanted slogans asking God to rid Egypt of evil-doers. The Brotherhood said 10,000 of its members attended the protest.
Witnesses said protesters raised placards saying "Where is this purported democracy when the doors to nomination are shut?" and held up copies of the Koran.
Large numbers of security forces surrounded the protesters, but the demonstration ended peacefully.
In Alexandria on Egypt's northern coast, hundreds of Brotherhood members held a protest until the group's representatives met the governor to demand an end to the policy of obstruction.
A Brotherhood source said the governor's response was positive, but that the Brotherhood would resume protesting if the authorities failed to live up to their promise.
"Any citizen has the right to nominate himself ... but what happens is that the government has all the paperwork, it neither gives the (potential) nominees the required paperwork nor accepts the paperwork from them, and a lot of nominees have been detained," said Hamdi Hassan, spokesman for the Brotherhood's parliamentary group.
Security sources said around 1,500 Brotherhood members also protested at government offices in Port Said, but no clashes were reported. The Brotherhood Web site said two of the group's members of parliament were staging a sit-in at the offices of the provincial authorities.
Brotherhood officials said that while some of the group's members had successfully filed nomination papers, past experience suggested this was no indication they would be allowed to stand for elections.
Egyptian police have intensified a crackdown on the Brotherhood in recent weeks, detaining hundreds of the group's members in advance of the April 8 ballot.
Police routinely hold opposition politicians during election campaigns to prevent them from campaigning. They usually free them without charges when the election is over.
The Brotherhood seeks an Islamic state through non-violent, democratic means. The government calls it a banned organisation but allows it to operate within limits.
The authorities will not let it form a political party so members stand in elections as independents.
Egypt postponed local council elections for two years in 2006 after the Brotherhood performed better than expected in a parliamentary election in 2005.
