Cairo - Egypt is about to enter another difficult passage on its rocky journey back to democracy with a referendum over the next few weeks on a new constitution which it hopes will pave the way for elections in the new year.
A committee of 50 representing most of society – but, significantly, not the ousted Muslim Brotherhood – was due to start voting yesterday to beat this Tuesday’s deadline to complete negotiations for the draft constitution.
Deputy prime minister Ziyad Bahaa el Din told South African journalists last week that the referendum on the constitution would be a milestone, a halfway mark on Egypt’s path from the toppling of the Muslim Brotherhood’s president Mohamed Mursi in June/July to new parliamentary and presidential elections for a new democratic government next year.
Nabil Fahmy, foreign minister of the transitional government which took over after Mursi was toppled, stressed that the roadmap had been drafted by “all the different stakeholders in society except the Muslim Brotherhood”.
Egypt was engaged in a “societal transformation” not just a change of government, he enthused.
Bahaa El Din conceded that it was “a concern” that the Muslim Brotherhood was not part of the roadmap. But he insisted that all parties were welcome to join if they met four basic conditions – renouncing violence, obeying the law, agreeing to follow the political roadmap and not pursuing discriminatory principles and policies.
However, Amr Daggar, of Mursi’s Freedom and Justice Party, who served in his cabinet, said yesterday the party had not yet finalised its decisions about participating in or boycotting the referendum and the elections.
The toppling of Mursi – who is detained and facing trial – remains highly contentious in Egypt and abroad. The government insists that Mursi was ousted by a popular revolution, pointing to the huge crowds which gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square from June 30 to demand that he step down.
But the government’s critics say it was really a coup, noting that it was the military which eventually forced Mursi out of office on July 3.
Egypt last week expelled Turkey’s ambassador because of vociferous criticism of the current transitional government by Turkish prime minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan.
Relations with South Africa also plunged to new depths after Pretoria condemned Mursi’s removal as “an unconstitutional change of government”.
Here in Cairo, though, the view is more nuanced and many liberals refuse to condemn the removal of Mursi, as they believe he was about to abandon democracy.
Professor Hiam Beblawy, professor of economics at Cairo University suggests it was “somewhere between a military coup and a revolution”.
But that is now history and Egypt has to move on. And the road ahead will not be so smooth either, it seems.
Tamer Wageeh of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, an NGO, says the government – which he sees as just a front for the military – faces many challenges on the way to the election. He believes that to justify toppling Mursi, the government wants to win the constitutional referendum by a bigger margin than the 63 or 64 percent which Mursi won in the referendum for his constitution last year.
To do that the government has to maintain a delicate balance between the liberals and the Salaafists – the Islamic fundamentalists of the Nour party – in the governing coalition which also includes nationalists.
The tension between the two wings has emerged in the constitutional negotiations as the Nour demanded a stronger emphasis on sharia (Islamic law) while the secular liberals wanted the charter to be more secular and to provide more protection for individual freedom.
Cracks showed in the ruling coalition when Deputy Prime Minister Bahaa El Din’s Social Democratic Party sharply criticised the way the police used a new law regulating demonstrations to crack down on civil libertarians protesting against a clause in the draft constitution which would allow civilians to be tried in military courts for crimes against the military.
Wageeh believes that the government badly needs Nour to stay on board to help ensure a big turnout and big majority in the constitutional referendum and next year’s elections.
He also believes the military faces a dilemma over choosing a presidential candidate.
Defence Minister Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, who toppled Mursi, is an obvious choice and his popularity is rising fast. But, as Wageeh notes, putting him up as a candidate would reinforce the suspicion that the military is still pulling the strings.
Sunday Independent