“We might differ on the constitution. We might disagree on many of its articles. This is normal: any constitution in the world is debatable. It is neither the best, nor the last. It is just the beginning of the 25 January and 30 June revolutions. Each one of you must know the importance and seriousness of the upcoming referendum, regardless of our divergences. Participating in the referendum is a message to the world. Voting means enforcing the people's will. Let them know our people, let them know our power. Say no to obscurantism. Participate in the constitution.” These are the words of a commercial that is now being run on all the country's satellite TV channels to urge Egyptians to take part in the forthcoming referendum on Egypt's new constitution, which is scheduled for January 2014. However, the advertisements urging voters to take part are not limited to TV commercials, but also extend to radio ads and street banners. What they all have in common is a desire to convince the public to vote yes to the new constitution, which, they say, also means saying yes to the 25 January and 30 June revolutions. Yet, these two revolutions did not directly call for specific constitutional amendments. Those who took part in them probably did not care whether the state was characterised as civil or religious in official documents, or whether elections would be held in accordance with the representative list or the individual system. Nevertheless, the ads are urging the public to vote yes by showering them with positive messages. The advertisements seem to be everywhere — on TV, on the radio, on Cairo's bridges, on the ring road and in the streets. The country's interim president, Adli Mansour, has called on all Egyptians to vote in the upcoming constitutional referendum. “We are moving steadily towards accomplishing the roadmap, and the new constitution will be the result of the Revolution's success. Therefore, I ask people to participate in the referendum on the constitution after its completion,” Mansour has said. “I will vote yes. We need to feel safe, stable and secure. I also need to find basic needs — I haven't even been able to find a cheap butane gas cylinder. The Muslim Brotherhood people are buying them up en masse and re-selling them to us at sky-rocketing prices,” said Nadia Omran, a cook in Cairo. Noura Al-Sayed, 40, a house maid, believes that saying yes in the upcoming referendum will solve her problems as well as those of the people as a whole. “I am not interested in reading the new constitution as I won't understand any of its articles. But I hear people in the street and those I am working with saying that this constitution is better than that of the Muslim Brotherhood so I will vote yes,” Al-Sayed said, who added that in her view the period of ousted former president Hosni Mubarak's rule was better than today. “At least prices were not as high as they are today,” she said. Ahmed Hendi, 33, a factory worker, said that he would be voting against the new constitution. “I heard they annulled the percentages allocated for labourers and peasants in parliament,” he said. “Since the days of former president Gamal Abdel-Nasser there have always been guaranteed percentages for labourers and peasants. Why did they remove them? Aren't we part of society? Without labourers and peasants everything in the country would stop. People won't find any food to eat or clothes to wear without us,” Hendi said. “If it weren't for the annulling of our percentages I would have voted yes, but now I will vote a big fat no,” he said. The media is playing an important role in influencing the public's opinion of the new constitution, said Awatef Abdel-Rahman, a professor in the Faculty of Mass Communication at Cairo University. According to Abdel-Rahman, the government has been using the media, especially the social media, to influence public perceptions. “The media plays a key role when the government wants to direct the public to think in a certain way regarding any issue. It is playing on people's emotions, and it is being used as a tool to play with people's minds,” she said. With this in mind, the advertisements that are now being deployed urge the public to focus on certain issues, leading many people to form opinions about them and excluding others. “Government officials have noted that public views tend to be influenced by the media headlines, and this means that they will manipulate these in a potentially cynical way.” “However, I hope today's public is aware enough that it is not easily influenced, even if there is still a large sector of society that can be influenced by the ads, especially the poor and uneducated people. The media plays a crucial role in informing the public about politics, referendums and elections, and unfortunately it can be abused,” Abdel-Rahman said. Farouk Abu Zeid, dean of mass communication at the Misr University for Science and Technology (MUST), said that while the media shapes public opinion, it also has an influence in communicating to voters what issues are important and what are less important, helping to establish a hierarchy in people's minds. “The media works effectively by focusing on certain issues that it feels the public should be concerned with, setting the agenda in a way,” Abu Zeid said. Many people may be going to vote yes to the new constitution because they are against the Muslim Brotherhood, for example, he said. “Unfortunately, even many intellectuals think in this superficial way. But I can't understand why anyone would vote on something he had not thoroughly researched. The government has been preparing the public for certain opinions without providing them with enough information about them,” Abu Zeid said. Egypt's current constitution, introduced in 2012 and suspended since 8 July this year, has been a highly contentious document. Largely an updated version of the 1971 constitution brought in under former president Anwar Al-Sadat that saw ousted president Hosni Mubarak through his three decades in power, the 2012 constitution has been controversial because of its inclusion of several Islamist-leaning clauses and its strengthening of the position of the military. Human rights activists have met many times to discuss whether the 2012 constitution should be amended or whether it should be redrafted in its entirety. They have also discussed new articles that could be added to the new constitution after the 30 June Revolution. Such activists believe that the 2012 constitution, issued under the Muslim Brotherhood, does not represent 21st-century realities, and it is thus of vital importance to issue a new constitution instead of redrafting the existing one. According to Hassan Nafaa, a professor of political science at Cairo University, the 2012 constitution was written for a semi-Islamist country, which goes against the concept of a civil and democratic state, something which the Egyptian population has been trying to attain for the past 200 years. “Very little information has been made available to the public about the new draft constitution. If the government continues with this vagueness about its contents, I believe everyone should either refrain from voting or vote no,” Nafaa said. The government has been using the media to influence people's opinions, he added, and there was a risk that people would simply vote yes just as a way of ending the state of continuous instability that has afflicted the country. “Many people will vote yes, as they believe that this will bring them stability, security, and low prices, which is not necessarily the case,” Nafaa said. Instead of bombarding people with advertisements, the government should increase people's awareness about the constitution and its different articles. “It should bring the constitution to public discussion, instead of just trying to influence opinion,” Nafaa added. It is essential for people to feel they are participating in the formulation of their own constitution. “All discussion and disagreements among the 50-member committee responsible for drafting the new constitution are being enveloped by secrecy. They think they do not want to commit the same mistakes as the previous regime, yet the government is committing a fatal mistake by hiding things from the public,” he argued. Ali Liela, a sociology professor at Ain Shams University in Cairo, said that a recent poll conducted by the University on Egyptians' acceptance of the new constitution had revealed that 35 per cent would vote yes because they supported Minister of Defence Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, and 27 per cent would vote yes because they were against the Muslim Brotherhood. According to the poll, 13 per cent had stated they would need to read the constitution before voting on it, while 10 per cent had said they would not vote. The remaining 15 per cent had said they would vote no to the new constitution because they were supporters of ousted former president Mohamed Morsi. Liela said that during Muslim Brotherhood rule, people had been overwhelmed with problems, including increases in prices, a lack of domestic gas, long bread queues, and regular electricity cuts. There had also been the perceived Islamisation of the government. All these things had led to the public's rejection of the Islamists in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, he said. “Ordinary people do not care much about the articles in the constitution. They only care about their daily problems. They need a radical solution to these, and if they believe that voting yes will be the magic wand which will solve all their problems they will vote yes to the new constitution. The government isn't really telling them otherwise.” According to Liela, the government is interested above all in implementing the roadmap declared in July, and it does not care about the details. “Of course the government is using the media to serve its aims. It expects the results of the upcoming referendum on the draft constitution to be yes,” he said. However, people's perceptions that certain advertisements are biased could have an impact on how they vote, even if many have discounted this possibility. According to Rabab Al-Moqadem, a school teacher, “although I have yet to read the draft constitution, or at least know what it is about before voting, most probably I will vote yes anyway. I am a great supporter of the 25 January and 30 June revolutions. I don't want the Muslim Brotherhood to rule the country. We have had enough of them already,” Al-Moqadem said. Dalia Hegazi, a university professor, agreed, saying “I don't want to see the Muslim Brotherhood in power. They ruined the country when they were on office, and they carried out killings of youths and children. They have also assaulted women. I will vote yes to the new constitution, if only to avoid the Brotherhood.” However, Gihan Said, a housewife, said that “I have been watching the TV commercials urging us to vote in the upcoming referendum. The commercials have been telling us to vote yes, but I will vote no because I don't like anybody telling me what to do or what not to do.” Mustafa Mohamed, an office worker in a private company, said that “I will vote yes in the upcoming referendum because the Muslim Brotherhood people are too good to rule. They wanted to apply Sharia law, but people did not want them to do so. They do not deserve to be mistreated or misunderstood, and I want to spare them people's dissatisfaction.”
