By Aziz El-Kaissouni
Cairo - Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood will avoid confrontation over attempts to install President Hosni Mubarak's son as president because it fears a crackdown by the authorities could destroy the Islamic group.
But the group, Egypt's most powerful opposition force, will stay within ever-narrowing margins of freedom the state allows it, contesting elections and seeking to widen its influence via an active social agenda, analysts say.
The Brotherhood is the only Egyptian opposition group able to muster hundreds of thousands of disciplined backers. It won a fifth of parliament's seats in a 2005 election marred by reports of rigging, charges denied by the government.
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If mobilised, those supporters could potentially disrupt any bid to smoothly transfer power from Mubarak, 81, to his son Gamal, 45, a senior official in the ruling party, a move many expect and which is a persistent topic of speculation in Egypt.
But such opposition would come at a heavy cost for a group that will put its long-term survival first.
"They know that there's no benefit in challenging the succession," said Joshua Stacher, assistant professor of political science at Kent State University.
"All it can do is lead to them being repressed, thrown in jail, to the point that it could threaten the viability of the organisation," he said.
A handover within Mubarak's family is not a done deal, and is not the only possibility, but analysts see it as a likely scenario and it is frequently mooted in the independent press.
Recent reports, usually poorly sourced, suggest parliament may be dissolved to implement a law adding a new quota of women MPs to the lower house. An election could then be held before 2010 to cut the size of the Brotherhood bloc, reports say.
The parliament speaker, a ruling party member, has denied any plans for a dissolution, but this has not stopped the talk.
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