Gamal Mubarak also used the NDP annual conferences as an opportunity to woo established political elites of Egypt. One analyst wrote that the real story of the 19–21 September NDP conference of 2006 was not the carefully packaged briefings offered by party members but "Gamal Mubarak's increasing political weight and seemingly unstoppable ascent towards the presidency." The re-imaging of the NDP had little effect on its mass appeal among Egyptians. Parliamentary elections of 2005 produced similarly disappointing results for the regime. NDP candidates won only 34 percent of the vote and again, it was only after co-opting "NDP Independents" and actual independents that the party was able to secure its two-thirds majority. Although opposition candidates only secured 28 percent of the People's Assembly, 2005 was a watershed moment for Egyptian politics, as opposition candidates were overwhelmingly elected from the Muslim Brotherhood rather than secular parties. The Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated candidates won a historic 88 seats in the legislature. The Muslim Brotherhood was officially banned in Egypt but continued to run brotherhood-affiliated candidates as independents in local and parliamentary elections since 1984. Since its victory in 2005, the Muslim Brotherhood bloc used the People's Assembly in Egypt as a soapbox for criticizing the regime and as an engine for promoting its ideas. They also took their positions as MPs seriously, and through this effort, generated more legitimacy for the People's Assembly as an institution, as opposed to the 1990s when legislative politics were shallow and stagnant. Despite speculation on Gamal Mubarak succeeding his father as president, Ali Eldin Hilal, the head of media for the NDP, said in an interview with the American Arab channel al-Hurra, "The candidate [in 2011] of the National Democratic Party will be President Mohammed Hosni Mubarak... This is the will of the leadership of the party." Hilal stated that the announcement would only be officially made a month or two before the elections in the autumn of 2011. President Mubarak would be 83 at the time of the election and 89 at the end of another six-year term. 2010 parliamentary elections The National Democratic Party of Egypt secured 420 of the 508 seats in the country's December 2010 elections for the lower house of parliament, the Majlis al-Shaab. The Muslim Brotherhood, which held roughly a fifth (88 seats) of parliament seats before the elections, won zero seats. Many human rights groups and NGOs decried the elections as