True, Egypt has held fair and democratic presidential elections.
The free will of the people picked two out of 13 contenders to face off in the final run: the
WATANI International
3 June 2012
True, Egypt has held fair and democratic presidential elections.
The free will of the people picked two out of 13 contenders to face off in the final run: the Islamist Freedom and Justice Party’s (FJP) Mohamed Mursi and the independent liberal Ahmed Shafik. In a voter turnout of 46 per cent, Mursi topped the poll with 24.3 per cent of the vote, followed by Shafiq with 23.3 per cent. About half the votes went to candidates somewhere in the middle ground: the leftist Hamdeen Sabahi third-placed with 20.4 per cent, the moderate Islamist Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh came fourth with 17.2 per cent, and former Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa fifth with 10.9 per cent.
Yet instead of elation at the free, fair elections, feelings of foreboding and anxiety of an uncertain future engulf Egyptians.
“We want neither”
Tahrir Square in Cairo and other town centres throughout Egypt last Monday evening witnessed a wave of protest by thousands who want neither Mursi nor Shafik as president. The protests raged on into the following days and, in many cases, turned violent.
Shafik’s campaign headquarters in the Cairo district of Doqqi was set ablaze also on Monday evening, after a group of protesters broke into and vandalised the premises. The fire brigade extinguished the blaze; there were no casualties, but the losses amounted to some EGP800,000.
Watani’s Alexandria correspondent Samira al-Mazahy reported that the Alexandria campaign headquarters of Shafik were also broken into and rampaged. The protestors who did that circulated fliers which included threats against the lives of the members of the campaign. During a march they conducted along Alexandria streets they attacked shops posting Shafik’s picture.
First time
The real worry, however, is that once any of the finalists wins the presidency, what authority will he have? In absence of a new constitution, and with the predominantly Islamist legislative authority taking a staunch stand against the ruling military issuing any complementary declaration to the 1971 Constitution which has so far not been replaced by a new one, how can a president be expected to perform?
Several world news channels, among them the BBC, remarked that this was the first time in Egypt and possibly in history that a president is being elected without any known powers or responsibilities.
Many in Egypt, whether among the public or the intellectual elite, had forewarned of such a predicament. Prominent among them was the writer and journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal who had warned against electing a president prior to the drafting of the constitution which defines the president’s powers and draws the structure of the State.
No complementary declaration
The first constituent assembly, selected in its entirety by Egypt’s overwhelmingly Islamist-majority Parliament and, predictably, including an Islamist majority of members, was last month declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC).
To date, Parliament has not passed a law to specify the measures for electing the members for a new constituent assembly to be charged with drafting the constitution, meaning that Egypt cannot expect to have a new constitution any time soon. It also means that the president will be elected with no known prerogatives.
The alternative would have been that Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) should write a complementary declaration for the 1971 Constitution, stipulating the presidential powers. This should have been done in collaboration with the various political parties, but there was no agreement among them on the matter, and no declaration was issued.
The 1971 Constitution
According to Judge Tahani al-Gibali, deputy head of the SCC, the 1971 Constitution should be reactivated, and the constitutional amendments which were approved in March 2011 after a public referendum was conducted, should be included.
Ms Gibali explained that the 1971 Constitution is a comprehensive constitution that would at least guarantee the running of the State within constitutional security until a new constitution is drafted and approved. She pointed out that Egyptians implicitly endorsed the 1971 Constitution when they approved the constitutional amendments made in March 2011—77 per cent of Egyptians had voted “yes” to the constitutional amendments. “We can overcome the sweeping powers of the president according to the 1971 Constitution through delegating the administrative authorities to the prime minister, and only assigning the president with sovereign powers and decisions,” Ms Gibali said. She insisted this was the only way out of the constitutional predicament, especially that a constitution cannot be written in a rush.
“The draft law proposed to govern the constituent assembly membership reflects rampant confusion,” Ms Gibali said. She alleged that the Islamist tides were responsible for weaving the constitutional crisis in which we are today trapped. “They are the ones who called for parliamentary and presidential elections before the drafting of a new constitution,” she explained.
Polarised
“Electing a president without constitutional powers would result in a real crisis,” said Ashraf Thabet, deputy to the Speaker of the Parliament, stressing the importance of a complementary constitutional declaration. He expressed fears, however, that the presidential powers defined by the constitutional declaration would conflict with those stipulated by the constituent assembly.
Objection to the squabbling among the different political parties over the constituent assembly and the complementary constitutional declaration, Dr Thabet insisted was all for personal and partisan benefit. “The political forces,” he concluded, “were wrong when they cornered the Military Council into holding the presidential elections before drafting the constitution.”
MP Waheed Abdel-Mageed sees that severe confusion dominates the political scene in Egypt for many reasons. Significant among these, in his opinion, is that the transitional period in Egypt has witnessed grave deterioration on the economic, political and even social levels, as well as severe polarisation and mutual distrust among the parties, the Military Council and the people. When it was time for the presidential elections, he said, the state of wariness led to consequences that may prove difficult to contain.