It would be chuckle-worthy if it
wasn't so tragic, so predictably tragic.
The Tamarod campaign was not consulted before Monday night's Constitutional Declaration announcement, spokesperson Hassan Shaheen said, adding that the movement is planning to submit amendments to the new statute.
"Is it wrong to be honest with the people?" Shaheen asked on his Facebook page Tuesday. "I am saying we were not consulted on the Constitutional Declaration and we will submit our amendments to it. I am being honest for the sake of transparency and to put the people in the picture."
Oh yes, youth
and liberals who risked your lives: go ahead and submit your amendment! I'm sure it will be taken under great advisement by the "Presidency", now controlled by
Mubarak cronies, kept in power by Mubarak's military.
The young and naive protestors who gave the military the excuse for their coup-de-tat have served their purpose and are no longer consulted. The new interim constitution was just written and adopted by one unelected man, the head of the almost entirely-appointed-by-Mubarak judiciary, the same one that rubber stamped that dictator's brutal regime.
Remember at least the reasons Egyptians ousted Morsi? Remember the justifications offered for the coup de tat? Going through the new constitutional decree (as Foreign Policy does) offers great reminders on Morsi grievances, namely in that in every conceivable way, Egypt is now less democratic and pluralistic!
As with Egypt's previous constitutions, the declaration is not very good on fundamental and political rights. In particular, it contains a number of classic "clawback clauses" (i.e. old fashioned provisions that purport to grant rights, but in fact achieve the opposite). In particular, article 7 supposedly guarantees freedom of expression, but only insofar as the law allows citizens to express themselves freely (very worrisome given that the interim president has granted himself the authority to pass legislation entirely on his own; see below). Article 10 supposedly guarantees freedom of assembly, but says that certain conditions have to be satisfied, without specifying what conditions. Although this type of vague formulation might have been acceptable in the 1950s (and even that is debatable), today it simply does not pass the minimum threshold of credibility for a modern constitution. What this means is that anyone who was hoping that some of the wisdom developed in Latin America, Africa, Europe, etc. will make its way to Egypt's new constitutional text over the coming period will be disappointed.
First of all, how much change will there be? Two huge parts of Morsi's proposed constitution pointed to as flawed by Tamarrod were that the Judiciary and the Military would keep all their powers. That apparently will also be in this constitution. Second, the Sharia clause, which caused much ire for liberals and youth has already been set in stone thanks to the
deal with Egypt's
real islamist party, Al Nour. The rest heavily resembles the Mubarak-era constitution, and is not likely to change much.
Some observers have noted that the constitutional declaration deliberately does not envisage an entirely new drafting process and that the new assembly should work off the 2012 constitution, but that will not make much of a difference given that the drafters of the 2012 constitution were themselves heavily inspired by the 1971 constitution.
Remember how much Morsi was criticized for trying to dominate the constitutional assembly (even though it was chosen by a freely elected parliament)?
Articles 28 and 29, on how the committee of experts and the new Constituent Assembly will be composed, are perhaps the most surprising provisions of all, given how important they should have been and how short they are on detail. To begin with, article 28 states that six of the 10 experts on the committee should be judges. What this essentially does is create a channel through which these individuals will be able to heavily influence the rewriting of the 2012 constitution.
The judiciay, Mubarak's judiciary, that also controls the executive, has majority control over the process.
What are the rules for the referendum? The new parliamentary elections? When is the next executive election (no mention of this anywhere)?
One final point is that the declaration provides no indication as to how the electoral laws will be drafted or even who will be responsible for overseeing those elections (article 30 states that the electoral commission will be responsible for overseeing the referendum but makes no mention of the parliamentary or presidential elections).
...
Today, we have no idea how the laws will be drafted or if there will be any mechanism to ensure that it will not be stacked against particular political forces. That is the type of detail that would have been helpful to reassure opponents of the new transition process at this early stage.
Democracy was subverted and undermined when the unelected military removed President Morsi and assumed control. The military has already shut down all opposition media and
controls the state media has gone as far as stationing soldiers at TV stations. The only excuse it had was that it was acting on behalf of the people whose numbers justified the action (still not a democratic argument, but very popular). Well, now even that excuse is gone.
I half-joked to a colleague this morning that the next step is to bring out Hosni Mubarak from prison and reappoint him the new chief justice.