Cairo: The speaker of Egypt’s now disbanded parliament Sa’ad Al Katatni was elected head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) after winning more than two thirds of votes of the party’s members.

An election commission spokesman said Al Katatni won 67.3 per cent of the valid votes cast on Friday night in the landmark vote against 32.7 per cent for his rival Essam Al Erian.

Al Erian became the acting FJP chairman after its former head Mohammad Mursi was elected as Egypt’s first islamist president in June.

FJP was licensed as the 84-year-old Muslim Brotherhood’s first party weeks after a popular uprising unseated long-standing president Hosni Mubarak in February last year. Like other Islamist groups, the Muslim Brotherhood was violently oppressed under Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

Al Katatni is considered close to the Brotherhood’s more conservative faction led by chief strategist and financier Khairat Al Shater, who was the group’s first-choice presidential candidate before being disqualified on technical grounds.

Al Erian, on the other hand, was viewed as more of a reformist open to dialogue with Egypt’s liberal parties and as a leader who would push for more independence for the party from the Brotherhood itself.

When it comes to the two candidates’ political views, however, the differences are minimal, said former Brotherhood member Mohammad Osman.

“The Brotherhood organisation no longer has two movements,” he said. “It just has one wing, which is the conservative wing.”

The once-banned Brotherhood has emerged as Egypt’s strongest political force following last year’s anti-Mubarak revolt. FJP captured the most seats in parliamentary elections and followed that up with Mursi’s win in the presidential vote in June.

The party, however, has come under sharp criticism from liberals, secularists and Coptic Christians who accuse it of trying to write the new constitution with a sharply Islamic slant, while supporters of the former regime fear the Brotherhood is using its newfound power to settle old scores.

The group still has the support of millions of Egyptians, including many of the country’s poor, who rely on the Brotherhood’s grassroots efforts and charity for assistance.