Something that starts badly ends in catastrophe. This appears to be true for the Constituent Assembly (CA), whose members were, wrongly, mostly selected from the Islamists, who formed a majority in the dissolved Parliament. The CA should really have represented the different factions in society, in order to draw up a suitable constitution for post-revolution Egypt. Despite the superficial compromises made to create a kind of balance between the Islamists and the secular powers, the CA's membership is still unbalanced, which means that the Constitution will be unbalanced too. More than five months have passed, but the CA has failed to come up with a draft constitution on which the majority of its members agree, so that it can be submitted to a public referendum. The reason for this is that the Islamists insist on having a constitution compatible with their extremist agenda, that would impose the rulings of the Islamic Sharia on society, threatening the Egypt's moderate Islamic image, according to the secular powers. After long weeks of struggle to reach a compromise over different articles in the Constitution, the secular powers resigned from the CA, bringing the country back to square one. It all started when the different Egyptian churches agreed to withdraw from the CA to embarrass the Muslim Brotherhood regime, as this would mean drawing up a draft constitution without participation of Christians. Fortunately, Al-Wafd opposition party joined the Egyptian churches in withdrawing from the CA, not out of support for the Church per se, but to express its opposition to the way the dictatorial Islamist powers have deformed various constitutional articles. Many other secular powers have announced their support for this stand and might soon withdraw too, which would eventually mean the CA would collapse completely, adding to the unwanted delay in rebuilding the country's political process. One can't blame the different political powers for doing this, even if this means a delay in having a new parliament and constitution. These powers have asked President Mohammed Morsi to amend the CA, to make it more representative of society. The presidency has started consulting different political figures about this. But the presidency failed to tackle this crisis before it escalated. Ironically, some Islamists, mainly Salafists, have accused the secular powers of resigning to serve their own interests, but all they want to do is restore a balance, as the regime is dominated by Islamists.
