Now that Egypt has got its first freely-elected post-Revolution Parliament, it can—according to the Constitutional Proclamation—go ahead with the selection of the constituent assembly
Now that Egypt has got its first freely-elected post-Revolution Parliament, it can—according to the Constitutional Proclamation—go ahead with the selection of the constituent assembly that would be tasked with writing the constitution. Even though a third of the members of the Shura Council—the upper house of Egypt’s Parliament—are to be appointed by the president of the republic once he is elected, the Constitutional Proclamation stipulates that the constituent assembly is selected from among the elected, not the appointed, MPs.
It thus came as no surprise that, once the Shura Council elections were over, the supreme authority of the Muslim Brotherhood’s (MB) Freedom and Justice Party (FJP)—the majority party in both houses of Parliament—held a special session to discuss the matter. The result was that the FJP head Mohamed Morsi declared that, instead of insisting the constituent assembly be totally formed of elected MPs as stipulated by the Constitutional Proclamation, the FJP would select only 40 out of the 100-member constituent assembly. The other 60 members would be chosen from outside Parliament, allowing thus the representation of the full spectrum of the Egyptian society, including those sectors that are not represented in Parliament.
Dr Morsi’s declaration is sufficiently positive for all political currents to take seriously. It is not so long ago that the Egyptian political arena was the scene of heated controversy over limiting the selection of the constituent assembly members to the elected MPs. The move was heavily criticised for having placed the national task of drafting a new Egyptian constitution squarely in the hands of a political majority—whichever that may be—to the exclusion of all other sectors in the community. To say nothing, of course, of the fact that such a selection may end up lacking in key constitutional and legal expertise. The entire situation threatened to sacrifice legal expertise and societal compatibility for favour of a transient political majority that cannot be left alone to tailor a constitution according to its particular ideology or perspective.
Today, the door is open before a balanced constituent assembly. All that is required is the good will to achieve this balance through collaborative effort and preparing a national table that would seat all the various players in the political game. But is this easier said than done? Dr Morsi’s declaration has been met with a wave of rejection, suspicion, and distrust on the part of the various political movements, the media, and those concerned about drafting the constitution. They all saw the declaration as a political ploy to claim dominion over the constituent assembly, a conspiracy to favour specific currents even if from outside Parliament.
I can in no way confirm the good will of the FJP’s initiative, but neither do I have a shred of evidence to it’s being a mere ploy. What to do, then? I imagine the right thing to do is to confidently get involved in the process of selecting the members of the constituent assembly according to the proportion proposed by the FJP. All sectors ought to hand in their nominations: the constitutional and legal experts, university faculty, professional syndicate representatives, intellectuals, writers, artists, sportsmen, and everyone who may contribute to attaining balanced representation. These will definitely include Muslims and Copts, men and women, old and young, laymen and clerics. We should just possess the guts to get started; any errors may be rectified as we go along. This would be more productive than sapping our energy in rejection, protest, denouncement and distrust, while moving not a step further.
The way is long and hard; we need to look for space of agreement just as we need to respect our differences. We have to get done with the selection of the constituent assembly and move on to drafting the constitutional principles and on to the constitution itself. This will not be an easy task; it will require all we can muster of faithfulness, patriotism, consideration, and respect for the other. Only after that may the draft constitution be offered to the people in a referendum; if it gets accepted it will govern our lives for years to come. If it gets rejected, we go back to square one. Again I say, the way is long and hard; we cannot afford to have our energy sapped in in-fighting even before we begin.
WATANI International
4 March 2012