As the People's Assembly's Constitutional Committee began work on drafting the amendment of 34 constitutional articles on Sunday, arguments over the real intent of the changes continues, reports Gamal Essam El-Din President Hosni Mubarak's 26 December call for 34 articles of the constitution to be amended passed another hurdle this week following a month of discussions organised by the People's Assembly and Shura Council's Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committees. On Sunday the Assembly's Constitutional Committee began work on drafting the texts of the amendments. Amal Othman, the committee's chairwoman, and her deputies Ibrahim El-Gogary and Omar El-Taher, will assume the bulk of responsibility for producing the drafts. All three are members of the ruling National Democratic Party's (NDP) powerful Policies Committee, headed by Gamal Mubarak, the president's 44-year-old son. NDP critics in the opposition parties and the Muslim Brotherhood claim the drafts have already been finalised by the Policies Committee and the work of the Constitutional Committee is simply a matter of window-dressing. "Drafting 34 articles of the constitution is too strenuous a job for three MPs to undertake alone," says Hamdeen Sabahi, leader of the Nasserist Karama (dignity) movement. "Drafting 34 amendments requires huge effort and the input of a host of constitutional and legal experts. The NDP's Policies Committee is crammed with such people, all of them eager to ensure the drafting goes in the NDP's favour." Suggestions that the amendments have been effectively fixed were strenuously denied by the NDP's Secretary-General Safwat El-Sherif. On Monday he insisted that "no drafts have been prepared beforehand." "The drafting of the amendments can be shaped only through public debates and discussions," said El-Sherif, adding that the final texts "will be the fruit of the one-month period, which lasted from the assembly's initial approval of the initiative on 17 January and during which MPs were allowed to submit proposed drafts, and during which independent constitutional law professors and the leaders of 11 opposition parties were invited to submit their own proposals." "Beginning Sunday," El-Sherif continued, "the Assembly's Constitutional Committee took charge of the drafting and it will take two weeks, perhaps less, to finalise the job." Once that is done "the drafts will be presented to the Shura Council for discussion and a vote." The last stage of the process, explained El-Sherif, will come following the Shura Council's approval of the drafts, when they will be handed back to assembly MPs. Hearing sessions will be organised by the Constitutional Committee, prior to the assembly vote, after which the amendments will be presented to the public in a referendum. The month-long debate in the two houses witnessed several surprises, not least Mubarak's last minute decision to put up articles one and five of the constitution for amendment, effectively banning political parties based on religion. The move so dominated the debate that proposals to re-amend Article 76, regulating presidential elections and which was last changed just 18 months ago, took a back seat. Rifaat El-Said, leader of the leftist Tagammu Party, expressed fears that the NDP's sudden decision to place a formal ban on religious parties was aimed at marginalising the banned Muslim Brotherhood. "The objective [of constitutional amendments] should aim for more than scoring party political points. They should strengthen the principle of citizenship in terms of treating all citizens, regardless of religion, on an equal footing." NDP officials, said El-Said, had recognised the dangers of "religious parties" only after they saw how Brotherhood students were able to organise a military parade at Al-Azhar University last December. "If the change is just a reaction to this parade then it barely pays lip service to the principle of citizenship," hardly a progressive position, he points out, when international human rights organisations regularly voice criticisms of wide-spread discrimination in Egypt against religious minorities and women. Mounir Fakhri Abdel-Nour, a leading member of the liberal-oriented Wafd Party, argues that changing articles one and five is not enough to enshrine the principles of a deep-rooted political, religious and cultural diversity. Other Christian public figures, such as the writer Sherif Doss, have argued the case for Article Two, which states that the "principles of Islamic Sharia (law) are the main source of legislation in Egypt", must also be amended. "When the 1919 nationalist revolution's slogan 'religion is for God and the homeland is for all' still resonated it was sufficient for the constitution to say that Islam was the religion of the state," says Doss. It was only when Islamist clerics cast a pall of gloom over the country in the seventies that President Sadat changed Article Two "to snuggle up with them" and still, says Doss, this was not enough to prevent his assassination. Al-Ahram political analyst Mohamed El-Sayed Said has proposed that Article Two be amended to state that Islamic and Christian law and international human rights charters to which Egypt is a signatory be the main source of legislation in Egypt. Doss and El-Said's arguments, however, have not found favour with Pope Shenouda, the Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, who has publicly urged Copts not to press for changes to Article Two so as not to provoke Muslims. Yehia El-Gammal, who along with Osama El-Ghazali Harb, the editor of Al-Ahram International Politics magazine, applied last Sunday for a license to form a new, liberal orientated party The Democratic Front, singled out for criticism Mubarak's decision not to amend Article 77 to restrict future presidents to two terms in office for attack. "When he came to office in 1981 Mubarak said he would not stay for more than two terms," said El-Gammal. "It is too enormous a task to expect one man to bear the burden of governing a country like Egypt for 26 years." El-Gammal also warned that Mubarak's decision to amend articles 41, 42, 43 and 45 could turn Egypt into a fully- fledged police state. "The number of founding members for the new party exceeds 1500," said El-Ghazali Harb. While he hopes "the regime will not adopt a hostile position again against secular parties advocating liberal values" he points out that in the past it has shown zero tolerance of such groupings. "The latest example of this attitude was the imprisonment of Ghad Party leader Ayman Nour. It is high time the regime recognised that it is its attitude of zero tolerance to the liberal opposition that has led to the rise of extremist religious forces such as the Muslim Brotherhood."
