On Tuesday (14/1/14) and Wednesday (15/1/14) people in Egypt will be
voting whether to adopt or reject the 2013 Constitutional draft. I have
already discussed this issue in great detail here;
http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/egypts-draft-constitution-part-1.html
And here; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/egypts-draft-constitution-part-2.html
And here; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/egypts-draft-constitution-part-3.html
Therefore I don't think there is much need to me to restate why I think
the Egyptian people have no option other then to reject this
constitution in order to send it back to committee so some critical
errors can be corrected.
I should point out though that this re-writing shouldn't take to long
because the current draft is 90-95% complete. It is just that the 5-10%
that still needs work covers the most important areas such as the role
of the military, the structure of the government and the House of
Representatives ability to pass budgets.
However the solutions to these problems are actually quite straight forward.
For example to solve the budget problem you simply need to remove the
single line of text that says the budget cannot impose new burdens on
citizens (Article 124/2013). Similarly to solve the problem of the
government bearing no connection to the will of the people you merely
need to remove the paragraph that says the Prime Minister cannot be a
member of the House of Representatives and replace it with one that says
that any nominee for the post of Prime Minister must be an elected
member of the House of Representatives (Article 164/2013).
Therefore I don't see any reason why the drafting committee would have
to delay the transition roadmap by any more then a maximum of three
months in order to produce a constitution that is 100% perfect.
Sadly though I think the biggest delay in producing a re-drafted
constitution that I can endorse will come from the military who seem to
be using it to grab too much power away from the people.
For example Article 204/2013 which outlines the circumstances in which
civilians can be tried by military Courts is far too expansive and
should be replaced by a system by which the cases of civilians accused
of most crimes against the military are first reviewed by a civilian
Judge who then has the option of referring the most serious cases to
military Courts.
Also the way the military have sent this draft to referendum whilst it
still includes the glaring conflict over whether the President (Article
152/2013) or the Minister of Defence (Article 201/2013) is the ultimate
commander of the armed forces suggests to me that the military cannot
imagine of a day where the Minister of Defence who must be a member of
the armed forces would ever disagree with the President who may be a
civilian but also may be a member of the military.
This suspicion that the military intend to turn the overthrow of Morsi
into a full blown coup in order to reassert their control of Egypt has
only been made worse by recent events. Take for example the bombing of
the Police HQ in Mansoura on December 24th (24/12/13). Despite the fact
that this attack was almost immediately claimed by the Salafi group
Ansar Bait al-Maqdis and everybody in intelligence circles believed that
claim Egypt's military dominated interim government blamed the attack
on the Muslim Brotherhood and used it to designate the Brotherhood as a
terrorist group with no evidence to support that claim. This obviously
infuriated the Brotherhood whose supporters took to the streets with
renewed vigour and violence.
Then there was the strange - but thankfully now cancelled - plan to put
Mohamed Morsi on trial on January 8th (8/1/14) just a week before the
constitutional referendum. This would have no doubt made the Brotherhood
supporters even more angry and even more violent.
Therefore I think that there has been a deliberate plot on the part of
Egypt's military to increase violence and unrest ahead of the
constitutional referendum. That way the military could trick the
Egyptian people into voting to support any constitution simply because
they were so sick of all the violence and unrest. That would clear the
way for General el-Sisi's campaign for President which although he's
still playing coy most people have accepted has already begun.
I should point out though that I would actually be happy to endorse
el-Sisi as Egypt's President for one or even two terms. It's just that
before that can happen the constitution that would protect Egypt from
el-Sisi turning into another Mubarak-style dictator needs to be perfect.
Sadly in this draft the constitution simply isn't there yet so
Egyptians must vote no to reject it.
21:00 on 13/1/14 (UK date).
Edited at around 10:30 on 15/1/14 (UK date) to add;
Egypt has obviously entered the second day of voting in the
constitutional referendum. During informal interviews with people
queueing to cast their ballots everybody says they're voting yes. As the
military have been arresting people for campaigning for a no vote this
hardly surprising. However there is a lot of genuine support for the
constitution. Unfortunately though that is largely because most
Egyptians have failed to understand that they are voting simply on the
constitution not on whether they support the ouster of Mohamed Morsi or
are opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood.
This strikes me as extremely short-sighted because if the constitution
is adopted the Brotherhood and their more violent counter-parts are not
suddenly going to stop their campaign to destabilise Egypt. This
constitution is going to make matters worse because it is fatally flawed
and when it goes into force those flaws will become ever more apparent.
With every failure of the constitution such as an unelected man being
crowned Prime Minister, the economic paralysis that will follow an
inevitable failure to pass a budget and every civilian tried and jailed
by military Courts for throwing stones at tanks the Brotherhood's
argument that the ouster of Morsi was a military coup will be
strengthened and they'll be rewarded with more support meaning that the
violence and instability will just go on and on.
For example people are already starting to point out that the decision
to include a picture of General el-Sisi looks a lot like an attempt to
intimidate people into voting in favour of the constitution.
(Originally Posted 13/1/14.)
No comments:
Post a Comment