Egypt can only move forward towards a new constitution when all Egyptians decide what kind of country they really want, writes Abdel-Moneim Said Egyptians have this fascination with time. They like to demarcate their history with dates. When they called the latest revolution the 25 January Revolution they were following an old tradition that goes back to the 1919 Revolution and passes through the revolution of 23 July 1952 and even through the 15 May 1971 Corrective Revolution. The tradition is strikingly different from histories that name revolutions after countries, such as the American and French revolutions, or those that name them after national heroes or movements, such as the Bolshevik, Maoist and Khomeini revolutions, or the more recent lyrical trend that inspired the naming of Ukraine's "Orange Revolution", Lebanon's "Cedar Revolution", Georgia's "Rose Revolution" and Tunisia's "Jasmine Revolution". Times and dates, then, are important to Egyptians. However, they tend to focus on the past and the present, but rarely on the future. As I listened to the debates that raged before the referendum on proposed constitutional amendments I was struck by the almost total absence of attention to the future. Although both sides knew that the purpose of their vote was to pave the way for a totally new constitution for Egypt, no one went beyond that point to ask, 'What kind of constitution do we want?' Of course, we heard the usual addicts of oversimplification. It's all very easy, some said. Just dust off the 1954 Constitution and put it to the people. To others -- notably the constitutional "experts" -- the matter couldn't be clearer and didn't require a great deal of thought. The fact is, however, that the matter is not so easy. I will go further to say that if political forces devoted a quarter of the time they spent arguing about the constitutional amendments to the future they would realise that the crux of the issue and the real starting point begins with the question as to what kind of Egypt we want. By pure coincidence, as I was rummaging through my files I came across an article that I published in Nahdet Misr called "Thoughts on the constitutional question." It appeared on 9 January 2005, which is to say before the constitutional amendments that were announced on 26 February 2005 and long before 25 January 2011 and the rise of the revolutionary coalitions and their dynamic and courageous vanguard of young men and women. I believe it will be useful if I republish the text in full: "To every time its season. Societies lag behind when they cling to systems of government shaped by older seasons and unable to accommodate to the new, while it is ancient wisdom that children must be prepared for times that will be unlike the times of their parents. As many as are the crucial issues that face Egypt's intelligentsia, political parties and political elites -- from poverty to public transportation -- the constitutional question should top the list of our national priorities. The constitution is the prime regulator of a society's movement. It is the law of laws and the chief determinant of public principles. Without a constitution the state is lost in a void, without a frame of reference and without a core. "Certainly, there are many worthy people who understand the constitutional question much better than I do. Kamal Abul-Magd, Yehia El-Gamal and other such eminent professors of constitutional law are certainly able to explain the matter very clearly and succinctly. However, it is not so much constitutional jurisprudence and its various schools that concerns me here as it is the actual business of drafting a constitution and persuading the political community in Egypt that the constitution we adopted in 1971 is no longer suitable to our times, let alone to the future. "During the past couple of decades dozens of countries faced the same predicament. Many found it necessary to introduce radical constitutional changes in order to bring their systems of law into line with domestic economic and social changes and with the profound changes that swept the entire world, affecting the way the world assesses a country's system of government in the framework of the globalisation process. Chile, for example, made the shift from dictatorship to democracy during this brief period, in the course of which it made 16 constitutional amendments commensurate to the magnitude of the required change. "Naturally, we do not want to imitate Chile. It is essential that the constitution factor remain a source and a basis of stability rather than a source or pretext for anarchy, which is why it is extremely important to put the subject to close study. So far, only one article has garnered nearly all the attention, as well as, perhaps, a general unanimity. I refer here to the article pertaining to the election of the president and the desire to limit the number of presidential terms and to provide for multi-candidate elections to this office in which candidates representing diverse political factions can field themselves in polls that are beyond all suspicion. However, the constitutional question entails much more than this. What we need is a concept of a society first and then a constitution to organise its system of government and set its rules. For example, the 1971 constitution was founded on a perception that the future of Egypt was best guaranteed through the establishment of a "socialist" government. Therefore, the public sector was put in command, central planning became the means, and civil society organisations, the two houses of parliament and even the press, or the "fourth estate," became components of the vessel aimed at the realisation of the intended goal. "Today, many of the proponents of constitutional change and amendment are not advocating a "socialist" conception for the state but rather a concept of a "warring state" whose task it is to salvage Egypt's status and regional role and to rebuff imperialist assaults from various quarters. Certainly, one of Egypt's duties today is to keep Washington within bounds, whether it does this with or without China or Europe's help. Perhaps it is no coincidence, therefore, that a constitutional study group has homed in on a single article with the aim of changing the presidential incumbent who has a different image of Egypt, one based on peace with all and accommodating to the nature of the contemporary global order, as all other countries in the world are doing. "Which brings me to the constitutional question that I believe should take priority. In my opinion, the concept we should be working towards is the one that the rest of the world has converged on in the course of the 20th century, namely a democratic capitalist state in which the individual citizen takes the lead in the processes of value-sharing and the exchange of goods and services domestically and abroad. In such a state, an informed people are truly the source of power. Accordingly, there is no need to grant certain groups, such as workers and peasants, special weight. Nor is there a question of embedding policy in a constitution. Policies, programmes and plans are matters of public interests that should be determined by the will of the majority, in accordance with available resources and capacities, and on the basis of assessments of opportunity and risk. "Needless to say, this is not the whole of the constitutional question. However, the vision of the Egypt we seek, whether it is a socialist state, a warring-state, or a capitalist democracy, should be our starting point. Then all principles, articles and laws will emanate from this vision. We need to incorporate the discussion on the type of society we seek into our deliberations and debates on the constitution. It is time we pass from constitutional infancy and adolescence to maturity." The foregoing appeal for a new constitution, written six years ago, was directed at both the government and the general public. I still hold, as I did then, that we can't produce a proper constitution until we determine the type of society that constitution is supposed to regulate. In subsequent articles I discussed several issues that we need to resolve. The first is the relationship between religion and the state, a question that we have handled in various ways from the 1924 Constitution to the constitutional amendments of 2007, passing through other constitutions, constitutional declarations and many amendments. The second is the relationship between rulers and the ruled, which is to say the government and the people. It is commonly -- and correctly -- held that democracy can solve all problems in this regard. However, there remains an unavoidable issue, which is that a government not only should be democratic, it should also be competent. In Egypt's case, it should be sufficiently competent to lead the country from a state of underdevelopment to the state that characterises developed nations, if that is the vision we have for our society, or to the leadership of a resurrected imperial caliphate, if that is what we aspire to. The third problem is the relationships between diverse components of society and how to regulate them in the framework of a particular political culture. Simply put, how will we base the relationship between the majority and the minority and provide for human rights? If human rights are part of the vision of the society we aspire to, are we speaking of human rights in the universal sense, applying to human beings everywhere, as taught by all divine scriptures? Or is it a matter to be left to whoever happens to have the power or numbers to prevail? The fourth problem is the relationship between Egypt and the world around us. The youthful revolutionary vanguard clearly benefited from the technology made available through the globalisation process and they are undoubtedly aware of what is going on elsewhere in the world. However, the "Google generation" is only part of the Egyptian people among who are fundamentalists of all stripes. We do not have only religious fundamentalists. We have Marxist and Arab nationalist fundamentalists. We also have liberal fundamentalists who are infatuated with the republican parliamentary system which gives the prime minister effective authority and the opportunity to remain in power for life while limiting the president's terms in office and restricting presidential powers to symbolic and honorary functions. Will we, as a whole, have the courage to look to the future and not just to the past or present?
