Egypt's Continuing Revolution: Month 19, Week 4, Day 2.

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.