Egypt Brotherhood Under Fire Over President Bid The Muslim Brotherhood's surprise decision to field a presidential candidate is stirring fears that the two biggest powers to emerge from the ouster of Hosni Mubarak - the Islamists and the military - are maneuvering to put in place a new rule in Egypt not much different from the old, authoritarian one. If they succeed in divvying up the most important positions in government, the new leadership could be a blow to the hopes for an inclusive democracy that drove last year's uprising against Mubarak. Opponents of the Brotherhood and military warn that the maneuvering could lead to a repeat of the Mubarak-era domination by a single party of all executive and legislative powers - only now with an Islamist tinge. The Brotherhood controls nearly 50 percent of parliament and dominates the constituent assembly that is in charge of writing Egypt's new constitution. Given its electoral strength, its candidate - Khairat el-Shater, the Brotherhood's deputy head but in reality its strongest figure - instantly leaps to front-runner status for the presidency in the May 23-24 election. "We didn't have a revolution to end up with a dictatorship of the one party," said the head of the liberal Free Egyptians Party, Ahmed Said. If el-Shater is president, will he rule in the name of the people or according to the orders of the Brotherhood? In this Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012 photo, Muslim Brotherhood nominated deputy leader Khayrat el-Shater pauses during an interview with the Associated Press in Cairo, Egypt. The fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood named its chief strategist and financier as a candidate for president on Saturday, a surprising reversal of an earlier pledge to stay out of the race and a move that sets the group on a collision course with Egypt's military rulers. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty) Close The decision to field the Brotherhood's strongman was a surprise even to many of its own members, some of whom have openly expressed disappointment that the group is breaking an earlier promise not to run. They worry the decision sacrifices the group's credibility for short-term gains. Liberals and secular leaders fume that the Brotherhood has abandoned its constantly repeated promises to share power. But the Brotherhood appeared to see the bold step as necessary to ensure its survival and its unprecedented gains during Egypt's turbulent transition to democracy. Since Mubarak's fall, its plan has been to use parliament to wield authority, promote its Islamist agenda, and ensure the writing of a new constitution that gives greater powers to the legislature, weakening the president's overwhelming authority. Two months after it convened, the Brotherhood has discovered that the parliament it dominates has little power, its attempts to replace the military-picked prime minister with its own have been blocked by the military, and competing Islamists were making their own bids for the presidency. Saad Emara, a senior Brotherhood figure, said that after its parliament election victory the group has a right to real authority, the presidency, to implement its program. Mubarak's ruling party "controlled all powers without a popular mandate," said Emara, also a lawmaker. If we get the presidency, and we have majority in parliament and we can name the government, there will be some kind of harmony in implementing the project we want to achieve for Egypt. El-Shater's nomination is also a bold play in the Brotherhood's convoluted relationship with the military, which took power after Mubarak's fall. Each distrusts the other but neither can afford a confrontation, so they have been dancing around each other in both cooperation and competition for power. The generals have not commented on the nomination, though state media close to the military have more sharply criticized the Brotherhood as power hungry.