The current political crises in Egypt, if not resolved soon, will lead at best to zero progress in both the economical and social justice files or to a civil war as a worse outcome. The crises can be summed up as follows: both the process of writing a new constitution and the constitution itself have been high jacked by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) to advance their own party gains. The MB won three elections; gaining a majority in the upper and lower parliamentary houses and the presidential election with the help of Egypt's extreme Islamist religious parties. The MB wanted to grantee their support in any future election; hence they are paying back these parties by: (a) appointing a large number of their members to the founding committee of the new constitution (e.g. one party, the Noor party, has 17 members out of a total of 100), (b) protecting that committee membership from any legal challenge using the president's recent dictatorial decrees, (c) rushing the approval of the new constitution through the committee and putting it to a vote on December 15 despite the fact that members of the committee which represent journalists, lawyers, academia, the Church and opposition parties have withdrawn, and (d) putting the new constitution to a referendum even after Egypt's judges decided, in protest, not to monitor the process of the referendum on December 15. To resolve the last point observers said it is expected that Morsi will issue soon a new decree and appoint imams and/or Islamists working for the government to monitor election booths on December 15. The sad reality is this: it does not matter how good or how bad the draft constitution is, it will be approved by a simple majority, because the MB and the other extreme Islamists will simply use propaganda to encourage voters to say ‘yes' by saying that whoever says ‘no' is a sinner. As a result Egypt will have a new constitution written by a minority of fanatics while the vast majority of Egyptians will have been marginalised and strongly feel that the new constitution does not reflect their values or their aspiration in achieving equality, freedom, economical prosperity and social justice; the objectives of their two-year old January 25 Revolution. The current draft of the constitution was rushed through after a long 16 hour session by the Constitution Assembly last Friday November 30 in a race ahead of the court ruling which was due in two days, on December 2, on the legality of its membership, as it is dominated (some 80 per cent by Islamists. In protest, the country's highest court; the Constitutional Court, on December 2 suspended its work indefinitely. Other lower courts did the same a week earlier and recently three of Egypt's top faculties of law suspended their lecturing, stating that there is no need to teach law in a country whose president has no regards for the law. However, all this was completely ignored by the MB and the current draft has been submitted to Morsi, who announced that the date of the referendum to be December 15. However, he did not spell out the new conditions of how the referendum will be conducted or if the constitution will be considered approved even if a low number of voters will turn up (observers expect that only Islamists and their supporters will vote) and if only 50 per cent plus one of the vote is enough to approve it. You don't need a PhD in political science to conclude that Egypt is entering into a very long era of political instability resulting in an economical instability which will affect Egypt's poor the most and will increase their ranks from the current 40 per cent they represent of the population. However, the MB denies the facts that the draft was a result of a non-representative writing process even though many non-Islamist members of the assembly withdraw. The MB points out that only some 22 members of the 100-strong assembly withdrew. However, they were the only representatives of the country's journalists, lawyers, academia, and the Church and opposition parties. Several of the articles of the new constitution have been a matter of contention. In past constitutions it was stated that Islamic Law is a main reference source of the law of the land. This article (Article 2) was never challenged by the vast majority of Egyptians including Copts. In the past, this article was used by the Constitutional Court to make rulings on the constitutionality of any law in the country by consulting with any Islamic Law expert it sees fit. But the new constitution stipulated further that the court must only consult Al-Azhar, whose Grand Sheikh is appointed by and reports to the president, in defining the principles of Islamic Law. Article 10 gives the State the power to preserve the “genuine nature" of the Egyptian family and its moral values and Article 11 further empowers the State “to safeguard ethics, and morality." On the social justice file, Article 14 states a maximum national wage is to be set but exemptions would be regulated by the law and also stipulates that minimum wages should only be connected to productivity. Article 15 does not set a limit to agricultural land ownership and Article 26 does not clearly correlate taxes to income. In terms of rights and freedoms the new constitution is regression. Article 35 creates exceptions to arrest, inspection and detention of individuals and the search of private homes by the state through a court order. And Article 199 empowers the police to preserve “public morality." Article 48 has raised concerns over the freedom of the media. Article 53 limits the representation of labour and professional unions to one union per sector, and this to be determined by the state. Currently many of these unions are dominated by Islamists but other independent unions were being established in parallel in recent years. Article 56 does not grant an automatic right for Egyptians abroad to participate in elections. Article 93 gives the president and the Cabinet the right to demand the secrecy of certain parliamentary sessions raising fears about executive interference in the legislative branch of government. Article 187 leaves governors' selection to the law, not resolving the question of whether they would be appointed or elected. Article 198 ignores one important demand of the revolution, namely ending the trial of civilians before military courts. The irony is that the MB's members had suffered in the last 30 years under Mubarak's regime from being tried in military courts. But I guess that the MB now believes strongly that they will rule Egypt forever and none of their members will ever be tried in a military court. But they could use Article 198 to terrorise their political opponents as the article establishes the possibility of trying civilians before military courts if the crime “harms the Armed Forces".
Elmasry is a professor emeritus of computer engineering, University of Waterloo. He can be reached at [email protected]
