CAIRO: The Egyptian Coalition for Civic Education and Women's Participation has received and reviewed the constitutional amendments. These amendments have led to great worries amongst the coalition for they did not achieve what the Egyptian people aimed for, nor meet the revolution's demands. As such the amendments are restoring the system of the past regime. The Coalition has many notices as follows: Article 75: The article was amended to guarantee that “Egypt's president is born to two Egyptian parents and cannot be married to a non-Egyptian woman. Neither he nor his parents shall have another nationality except the Egyptian one. He shall practice his own civil and political rights”. These amendments limited nominations to men only for many reasons: 1. The phrase “cannot be married to non-Egyptian woman” “ألا يكون متزوجا من غير مصرية” is only limited to the spouse of man; the thing that means that the president will necessarily be a man. 2. The claim that masculine nouns in Arabic language include both men and women is not an accurate claim, because the Holy Qur'an that is the source of the Arabic language mentioned, most of the times, women beside men when saying ” The submitting men, the submitting women, the believing men, the believing women … ” and did not mention a masculine noun as a reference to both men and women. 3. The word “non-Egyptian woman” limited the nomination to men only, if we agree that masculinity could include both male and female, but femininity could not apply to male. Thus, we suggest that the text reads as “shall not be married to a non-Egyptian”. Article 76: Amendment of this article reflects a clear disruption of equal opportunities, since they equated a candidate for party who will gain seat by the parliamentary elections with an independent candidate who has to gain 30000 votes from 15 governorates. Thus, this approach paves the way before the electoral briberies, buying votes, in addition that it puts the future of the president in the hands of a specific power. Article 189: As for the formation of a constituent in order to issue a new constitution by elections of People's assembly and Upper House; it makes the constituent prone to balance of powers inside the council, since it does not stipulate standards that ensure existence of women and men experts from outside the councils. The text is general which may lead to having all the members of the constituent are those of the council. Thus the new constitution will not be created to be a constitutional or legal regime that is desired for Egypt; instead it will be created according to the dominated powers in the parliament. Thus, it is necessary to include a condition whereby the constituent should have experts from outside both of the two councils, in which gender balance should be taken in consideration in order to have sound participation of women experts. In Addition to the dire need for an election methodology that ensures participation of all members of society. ECWR
