After three months of sometimes stormy sessions the 50-member committee charged with reviewing the constitution finished its work. The new charter includes several contentious articles, with Article 74 topping the list. It imposes an outright ban on the formation of political parties with a religious foundation and prohibits political parties from carrying out any activities hostile to the democratic process. Any secret activity or the forming of semi-military wings is similarly outlawed. The article's stipulations, says former independent MP and professor of political science Gamal Zahran, were deemed necessary after a series of judicial rulings found that the Muslim Brotherhood's political wing — the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) — had utilised secret armed militias in its bid to win political control. On 23 September Cairo's Urgent Matters Court ordered that the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates — including the FJP — be dissolved and its assets sequestrated after the group was found to operate armed militias in contravention of the 1977 political parties law. The Brotherhood's two appeals against the ruling were rejected. The judgement is likely to be ratified by the State Council which is scheduled to give a final ruling in the case in February. Senior Brotherhood officials, including FJP Chairman Saad Al-Katatni, face trial for inciting their supporters to attack peaceful demonstrators in front of the Brotherhood's headquarters in Muqattam on 30 June. Press reports and eyewitnesses claim snipers firing from inside the building killed the nine demonstrators. “Since being founded by Hassan Al-Banna in 1928 the Muslim Brotherhood never scrapped the idea of armed militias,” says Zahran. “It has always seen them as an indispensable tool in turning Egypt into an Islamist state.” “In 1948 the Brotherhood was ordered dissolved after it killed former prime minister Mahmoud Al-Nokrashi and the authorities discovered that it had formed a strong armed militia to implement its agenda.” In 1954, he adds, “the group was again ordered dissolved after it plotted to assassinate Gamal Abdel-Nasser.” Although Sadat reconciled with the group's leaders in his early years in power they fell out after Sadat signed the peace treaty with Israel. “Sadat responded by arresting most of the group's leaders in September 1981. Within a month they had killed him,” says Zahran. Throughout the Mubarak years Brotherhood leaders were keen to stress they had scrapped violence and were seeing power exclusively through peaceful means. “These claims were shown to be false after a court found in June this year that the group's leaders, in collaboration with Hamas, had stormed prisons and torched police stations at the height of the January 2011 Revolution,” says Zahran. “Egyptians had long suspected the groups renunciation of violence was a façade,” says Ammar Ali Hassan, an analyst who specialises in political Islam. “These suspicions were reinforced when the group threatened that it would ‘burn all of Egypt' if its presidential candidate Mohamed Morsi failed to win the race. They then issued similar threats when they staged sit-in camps in Cairo and Giza last summer, warning that if the army and security forces tried to disperse them they would plunge Egypt into a bloody civil war.” Zahran and Hassan agree that it was the uncovering of the Brotherhood's violent activities and its strategy of mixing religion with politics that pushed the Committee of Fifty into incorporating a blanket ban on political parties with religious foundations. Articles 74 and 75, says Zahran, represent a serious obstacle to the Muslim Brotherhood rejoining political life. “Coupled with final judicial orders the constitutional principles the article espouses could help prevent any return of the kind of Islamist terrorism which hit Egypt in the first half of the 1990s and which was inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood's agenda.” Ammar fears that “articles 74 and 75 could be a double-edged sword”. “Islamist factions such as the Muslim Brotherhood could be forced underground. Excluded from the political arena they are likely to resort to terrorist activities against the army and police.” “While in the short term,” he warns, “the group and its terrorist allies do not pose a major threat to either government or society in the long run, new generations, frustrated by legal and constitutional bans, might retrench and seek power by means of widescale violence and terrorism.” Article 204, which allows civilians accused of directly attacking military property and personnel to be referred to military tribunals, was among the most contentious. “The article was drafted to stem another source of violence; attacks against military property and personnel,” argues Zahran. “The article was approved mainly due to the fact that Muslim Brotherhood officials had used their sit-in in Nasr City as a base from which to attack nearby army buildings such as the Presidential Guard Club.” Zahran believes that “at times of political turbulence military courts have proved an effective tool in stemming violence, maintaining security and stemming the terrorism.” He points out that in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks the US issued laws criminalising direct attacks against military property and personnel. “The George W. Bush administration also use the Guantanamo Bay military compound to detain Islamists accused of attacking American military people and property.” Hassan sounds a more cautionary note. “In the long run military trials, even though they are restricted by the new constitution, could exacerbate the hostility between the army and Islamist factions. Most of these factions believe that military trials for civilians were maintained primarily to prosecute them and send them to jail.” Zahran points out not only that most Brotherhood leaders are now being tried before civilian courts but the 2012 constitution, drafted by the Brotherhood and its allies, maintained military tribunals for civilians with even less restrictions than the new charter. Article 73 has been drafted to grant citizens the right to hold public assemblies, processions, demonstrations and all other “peaceful” forms of protests. It stands in stark contrast to the protest law issued by interim President Adli Mansour on 24 November. Mohamed Salmawy, the official spokesman of the Committee of Fifty, told Al-Ahram Weekly that “once a House of Representatives is formed it should move to amend the protest law in line with Article 73.” Salmawy argues that the government of Prime Minister Hazem Al-Beblawi might have been prompted to issue the new protest law in a bid to contain Muslim Brotherhood violence and restore stability on the streets. Article 73, unlike the protest law which demands three days advance notification of demonstrations and allows the Ministry of Interior to cancel them at will, guarantees the right to demonstrate. “This is one of several freedoms instituted by the new constitution,” says Salmawy, “though the article stipulates that the right has be to exercised peacefully and demonstrators cannot carry weapons.” “Any law regulating protests passed by the new parliament is unlikely to differ much from the one issued on 24 November,” predicts Zahran. “Article 73 stipulates that protest is a right that has to be exercised peacefully and as a result penalties will be imposed on those who seek to turn peaceful protests into violent acts.” Zahran heaps praise on Al-Beblawi's government for strictly implementing the new protest law. “The government showed its strong hand and even moved to arrest three high-profile leaders of young revolutionary movements for organising protests without a prior permission,” he says. The Committee of Fifty also amended articles regulating the performance of security forces and the Interior Ministry to oblige them to respect human rights and express loyalty to the people rather than the president. Article 206 now states that “the police are a civilian institution formed to serve the interests of the people, give loyalty to them, and guarantee that citizens enjoy security and safety. In performing their activities police forces are obliged to respect human rights and basic freedoms.” The text differs radically from the 2012 constitution's Article 199 which stated that the police were an organised civilian institution that owes loyalty to the president of the republic. Zahran argues that the 2012 constitution drafted by the Muslim Brotherhood was an attempt to bring the police force and Interior Ministry under the direct control of Mohamed Morsi. “This was a part of their strategy. They were seeking to contain the army and police while an Islamist agenda was being imposed on the country. Morsi had no qualms about asking the police to disperse protests in front of Al-Ittihadiya presidential palace. When former interior minister Ahmed Gamaleddin refused he resorted to his group's armed militias to do the job.”
