[The charter’s path to
the referendum has also taken Egypt to the brink of civil strife, exposing the
alienation of the Christian minority, the political opposition’s refusal to
negotiate and the Muslim Brotherhood’s willingness to rely on authoritarian
tactics.]
By David
D. Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh
 |
| The New Islamists |
CAIRO — An
Islamist-backed constitution was approved on Saturday, propelling Egypt’s
deeply divided political factions into a new phase in the battle over the
country’s future.
After millions went to
the polls for the final round of a referendum, the charter’s approval, which
had been predicted by all sides, marked an important milestone in Egypt’s
chaotic two-year transition to democracy. A “yes” vote of 70 percent on
Saturday brought the overall margin of passage to about 64 percent, according
to the Muslim Brotherhood.
But the hastily drafted
document leaves unresolved many questions about the character of that
democracy, including the Islamists’ commitment to individual freedoms and their
opposition’s willingness to accept the results of the political process without
recourse to violent street protests.
The charter’s path to
the referendum has also taken Egypt to the brink of civil strife, exposing the
alienation of the Christian minority, the political opposition’s refusal to
negotiate and the Muslim Brotherhood’s willingness to rely on authoritarian
tactics.
How those tensions are
managed and the new constitution is put into effect will determine whether
Egypt returns to stability or plunges further into discord, and much of the
region is watching the outcome of that definitive Arab Spring revolt.
Neither supporters nor
opponents of the charter said they expected an immediate end to the partisan
feuding that has torn at the country in the month before the vote.
The Islamists allied
with President Mohamed
Morsi said they intended to rebuild trust by using the new
charter as a tool to battle remnants of former President Hosni Mubarak’s
government. Old laws and prosecutors, the Islamists say, are protecting
loyalists and holdovers while they obstruct change from within the bureaucracy
and conspire with the opposition to stir up unrest. Leaders of the
anti-Islamist opposition, however, said they hoped to carry the momentum of
their struggle against the draft constitution into the parliamentary elections
set to be held two months from now. They accused the Islamists of using the
specter of a struggle against remnants of Mr. Mubarak’s government as a pretext
to demonize the opposition and take over the machinery of the state.
“If we accept the
legitimacy of working within the system, they have to agree that the opposition
is legitimate,” said Amr Moussa, a former foreign minister under Mr. Mubarak
and a presidential candidate who has re-emerged as an opposition leader during
the constitutional debate. “The ancien régime is finished. They are imagining
things. They are imagining that if you say no to the constitution, as I have
done, then you are part of a conspiracy to topple them.”
Both sides of the
ideological divide appeared to dig in.
“A crack has emerged in Egypt;
there’s a gap, there’s blood and deaths, there’s extremism,” said Ahmed Maher,
who helped jump-start the revolution as a leader of the secular April 6 Youth
Group and then served as a delegate in the constituent assembly that wrote a
draft of the charter. “Something has happened between Egyptians that would make
the results bad no matter what the outcome” of the constitutional vote, he
said, predicting further clashes before the parliamentary elections.
Adding to the
uncertainty about what may come next, Mr. Morsi’s vice president, Mahmoud
Mekki, resigned Saturday. The draft constitution would eliminate his position,
and Mr. Mekki, a former judge, said that he had originally submitted his
resignation in early November before a series of crises postponed it.
“The nature of political
work does not suit my nature as a judge,” he said.
The turnout for
Saturday’s voting appeared to be low, as it was last week. At one polling place
in the dense Mohandeseen district near Cairo, the station was empty at midday.
The low turnout may have reflected a lack of enthusiasm or perhaps a consensus
among Egyptians that after last week, the charter’s approval was a foregone
conclusion.
Mr. Morsi’s advisers
said that after the ballots were counted in the coming days he would deliver a
televised address calling for unity and reconciliation. His critics said that
to be credible he would need to strike a tone different from that of his
previous address. In that speech, he blamed a conspiracy of foreign agents,
Mubarak cronies and his political opponents for a deadly night of street
fighting between his supporters and other protesters.
In what Mr. Morsi’s
advisers called a significant step toward reducing tensions, the president was
planning to appoint some of his opponents to the Islamist-dominated upper house
of Parliament. Although largely powerless, it will act as the main legislature
until the coming re-election of the lower house, which was dissolved by the
courts.
Advisers to Mr. Morsi,
who has the power to name 90 of the 270 seats, said he was expected to announce
a roster of upper house appointees that would include eight representatives
selected by the leaders of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant
churches. That was more than the number of representatives chosen by Egypt’s
highest Muslim authority, Al Azhar. At least four other appointees are
Christian as well, his advisers said.
Most members of Egypt’s
Christian minority, about 10 percent of the population, have opposed the draft
constitution since the Coptic Church withdrew its representatives from the
constitutional assembly in a dispute over the role of Islamic law in Egyptian
jurisprudence.
The leaders of the main
opposition coalition have refused to negotiate with Mr. Morsi or take seats in
the upper house. His Islamist allies will still dominate, they say. Islamists
won more than 70 percent of the seats in the parliamentary elections in late
2011. But their opponents see an opportunity to gain seats in the coming
Parliament because of the backlash against Mr. Morsi’s heavy-handed attempts to
force the draft constitution to a vote. Mr. Morsi pushed ahead over the
objections of his opponents, judges and the Coptic Church.
Mr. Moussa and others
have said they hope the coalition forged to fight the draft constitution can
hold together as a bloc in the elections. But if the anti-Islamist bloc does
hold together, some worry it will force the mainstream Islamists of the Muslim
Brotherhood into closer collaboration with the ultraconservative Salafis,
reinforcing sectarianism and polarization.
Moataz Abdel-Fattah, a
political scientist and former delegate in the constitutional assembly, said
neither side appeared willing to respect the views of the other.
“We have an elite
running its affairs according to a strategy of stubbornness,” he said.
“Everybody is trying to understand what the other side wants so that they can
ask for the exact opposite.”
