Members of Egypt’s Engineers Syndicate are set to vote on 25 November in the syndicate’s first post-Mubarak election.

After a 16-year struggle with the former regime, Egyptian engineers won a historic court ruling in August that freed the syndicate from state trusteeship, clearing the way for the upcoming vote.

Elections are being contested by two major blocs of engineers.

On the one hand, engineers who have led the fight in recent years against government intervention in the syndicate have coalesced around an electoral list dubbed "Engineers against trusteeship and for a permanent union," widely referred to among members as the “independents’ list.”

On the other hand, supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) – which has controlled the syndicate board since 1995, when new laws stopped members from voting for a new slate – have rallied around an electoral list called the “Convergence of Egyptian Engineers."

The independents' list is headed up by Tarek El-Nabrawy, who is running for syndicate chairman. Candidates on this list will face off against an MB-backed list headed by Maged Kholousy.

Independents are running on a platform that aims to unite engineers on the basis of their economic and political interests, not according to their religious or political affiliations.

They call for increased pensions for retired engineers, government support for educational programs that would boost engineers’ profession development, and a larger role for engineers in the formulation of priorities for major national engineering projects.

Independent candidate Emad Thomas told Ahram Online that he and his colleagues would fight for a minimum pension of LE1000 for retired engineers. A new syndicate board, he said, would also provide legal backing for all contracts that engineers sign with engineering firms.

Independents point to their religiously diverse team of candidates, which include 12 Coptic engineers. This compares to only one Christian candidate on the MB-backed list.

MB backed candidates are circulating campaign programs that call for a larger role for the syndicate in providing social and professional services for engineers, securing low-interest loans for engineers, and offering discounts on pilgrimage trips to Mecca for Muslim members.

In elections for the Egyptian Doctors Syndicate held in September, a coalition of activists and independent physicians was able to defeat MB-backed candidates following more than two decades of MB control of the syndicate board.