Drafting Egypt's Constitution

Dear Readers

I apologize for my absence, I have been attending to urgent family matters, and have not had time to write enough.

But I am back, and recommitted, Ilhamdillulah!

So, what is new? As is usual there is a lot going on in Egypt these days. My biggest worry regarding democracy is secularism and the constitution. According to an article on NPR by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Unease Grows Over Islamist Political Agenda in Egypt, Parliament has handpicked a 100 member panel that has begun meeting to write a new Egyptian constitution. 

The worry is where this leaves Christians, Bahai and other religious minorities. Is there room to be secular in Egypt? According to that article, as many of two-thirds of the panel members are Islamist or allies. "Only a handful of women and Christians were selected to take part." Several secular panelists have since quit the constitutional panel in protest.

On March 23rd, hundreds protested against the formation of a constitution writing assembly, Protesters reject formation of constitution-writing assembly. Egypt Independent. Protesters rallied in front of the High Court of Justice to demand that the SCAF relinquish power to a civilian government. They also protested against the composition of the group who will draft Egypt's constitution. As of now, MPs will constitute half of that group's membership. The other half are to be composed of experts from other fields.

On March 24th, parliament members from the Free Egyptians Party, the Revolution Continues Coalition, and the Egyptian Social Democratic Party pulled out of talks regarding the composition of the constitutional drafting committee. Adl Party and Karama party representatives walked out of the session as well. The dissenters accused the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party and the far right Islamist Nour party of dominating the Constitutional committee.

~WMB

Recap of Election News for Egypt, February 1, 2012

Dear readers

The Egyptian election has a lot of moving parts. Accordingly, it has been a little bit hard to keep track of it all. To date, I have written 29 separate posts on the Egyptian elections.

So, what do we know?

Women 

One thing that I think is very interesting is how few women there are in the Egyptian Parliament. According to the best information I have, there are only 8 (eight) women in the Parliament so far. I assume that most of these women are from the Freedom and Justice Party or the Wafd, but I am trying to get names and specifics on this topic. Here is a good article on the same.

Ibtisam Barakat, Welcome to the New Egyptian Parliament, Jaadaliya,

In some of my previous posts, I had commented on which parties may or may not represent women. The lesson the liberal parties learned (I hope) is that if they really want a diverse party, they need to move minorities closer to the top of the list. It is my educated opinion [which does not make it a fact] that people actually voted for PARTIES, not individuals for the most part in this election. Here are some of my musings on the matter.

Which Egyptian Parties Represent Women?

No women elected to Egypt's parliament in first round

The Elections Aren't Over

Like the Egyptian Revolution, the Egyptian elections just go on, and on, and on, like the Energizer Bunny. The elections for the Egyptian parliament's lower house (People's Assembly) are not even over yet.

There are 498 possible seats. Only 427 have been decided. There are 71 seats remaining. As many as 45 seats will be determined by runoffs. They were supposed to have been held on January 10th, but I will have to look into that.

Shura Council Elections are (were) to be held on January 29th, February 14th, and March 4th in the same sequence as the PA elections were.

The date of the Presidential election has not been decided.

I was Wrong, but not far Wrong

Okay, how did I do on my election predictions?

Well, I predicted the FJP--the political wing of the MB--would win 30%. That was not correct. The FJP has to date won about 45.2%. So I was off by 15%. I predicted El Adl would win 15%. Oops! They only won less than 1%. I predicted that Revolution Continues would win 15%. I was very wrong there. They only won 2.34%. I predicted that the Egyptian Bloc would win 15%. They actually won 7.03%. So, I was wrong, but not crazy on that one. I totally missed the Salafi issue. Some of these errors are due to having lived in Cairo, and teaching at AUC, which is comparatively liberal and secular. Well, now we know.

More soon!~WMB

Good News and Bad News

Photo Credit Al Jazeera. Protester shouts slogans during clashes today.

Dear readers

Well with regard to the elections results, there is good news and there is bad news.

Let's start with the less than perfect news first. The FJP and Al Nour continue to lead in the second phase of the People's Assembly elections.

Some bad news is that there is fire in Tahrir. My father was just there. Apparently, some of the field hospitals have been attacked, and twitter is reporting that surgeons are needed. There is a big march to bury Sheikh Emmad Effat, but the Salafis are not present. 

The good news is that the Egyptian Bloc is retaining their position as a solid third. In a first past the post system, like in the US, third does not sound good. But in a partially list based system, third gives the liberal and secular Egyptian Bloc some real power in Parliament.

Al Wafd and Al Wasat are doing well in Sharqiya. Al Nour is dominating in Suez. 

Secular activists have not given up though. As I have said, it is remarkable that the Egyptian Bloc and other moderate and liberal parties are doing this well, particularly considering that they just formed in March. There is real potential for infighting between Salafis and the FJP. As Adel Soliman of the International Center for Future and Strategic Studies points out, the liberal parties will be needed to pass laws or block them.

Several smaller parties are throwing their weight behind the Bloc to show a more united front. (Daily News Egypt 11/12) Members of the Bloc are going into rural areas, and talking to local notables.

I personally think it is a serious mistake that the Revolution Continues refuses to coordinate with the Egyptian Bloc.

Egypt elections beyond ideology: A return to common sense politics

 

Egypt elections beyond ideology: A return to common sense politics

By   Hamid Eltgani Ali and Warigia Bowman December 13, 2011, 5:00 pm

The first round of Egyptian parliamentary elections is drawing to a close, but in another sense, Egyptian multi-party politics is just beginning. After a partially successful revolution, Egypt is now on a crash course to multi-party democracy. Other countries that have gone through major political transitions from dictatorship to democracy generally have had decades to make the transition. The question many Western observers are asking now is what shape will Egypt’s nascent democracy take? Will it more closely resemble the secular Turkey, or the more theocratic Iran?  As news reports have indicated, the results of the first round of elections have been discouraging for those who support a secular state in Egypt. Based on our quantitative analysis of publicly available ex post election data after the first round of voting, the Islamists performed exceptionally well in comparatively rural areas with low political capital such as Fayoum and Luxor. By contrast, liberal and moderate parties, taken altogether, won only 27 percent of total votes and performed relatively well in highly urbanized areas of high political capital like Cairo, Alexandria and Port Said. Liberal candidates are likely to do worse in the second and third rounds of voting which will be held in parts of rural Egypt that are likely to be less progressive and politically sophisticated than Cairo, the Red Sea and The Delta. Given results in the first round of the Egyptian elections, what lessons can be learned? Given what we  have seen in the first round of the Egyptian elections,  what lessons can be learned? First of all, liberal parties made a serious miscalculation by running numerous separate lists. Many of the parties in the Revolution Continues Alliance (RCA) withdrew from the Bloc allegedly due to inter-party conflicts. The only liberal party that has done well in the elections has been The Egyptian Bloc, which has captured 14 percent of the available seats thus far. Liberal parties are doing even worse under the single-winner system. In the first round of runoffs, 47 of the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidates (Freedom and Justice Party) made it to the runoffs. The far right Islamist party Al Nour has secured 27 candidates in the first round of runoffs. By contrast, the Egyptian Bloc only had 9 candidates in runoffs. The liberal and moderate parties need to resolve their differences and work as a unit to gain any seats. The second lesson to be learned is that Egyptians have not yet embraced an ideological approach to politics. The conservative right and liberal left categories which categorize Europe simply do not apply well here, accordingly labels and ideologies are not useful campaign tools. Rather, parties can more easily be divided along a crucial axis: support for a secular state, or support for a religious (Islamic) state. The second lesson to be learned here, then, all parties must figure out what matters to them and campaign on issues,  like how they will reduce unemployement, not ideologies. The Egyptian people do not know what “social justice,” means yet. But they do know what a hungry stomach feels like.

Egyptian Expatriates can now vote (perhaps), women organize, and Egypt Above All

This report is compiled from my morning review of the Daily News Egypt, Al Ahram Online, and Al Masry Al Youm. This review was conducted over ahwa bi laban. Meanwhile, Tahrir is busy as "low-ranking (AFP's words, not mine) policemen strike in Hurghada and outside the Interior ministry in Cairo to demand  the ouster of elements of the former regime, and improved pay.

In big news reported by all papers Egyptian expatriates now may, sort of, perhaps have the right to vote. Justice Abdel Salam Al-Naggar of the Administrative Court ruled that electoral headquarters should be established in Egyptian embassies around the world. A lawsuit was brought by a group of expatriates that included famous novelist Ahdaf Soueif. The Egyptian vote abroad movement was organized partly using social media, including Facebook, and twitter.

Mohamed ElBaradei talked about the matter before the revolution. Approximately 8 million Egyptians live abroad. Apparently, after the Revolution, numerous Egyptians began to register at Egyptian embassies in their host countries. It is not clear if the SCAF will respect the court's ruling.  This ruling is not likely to translate immediately into implementation, and it is not clear if it will be applicable for the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Al Ahram points out that women in Egypt are organizing. Before the Revolution, women in the farming sector were forbidden from organizing. Female peasants in Imbaba district's Werdan village formed the first union for women farmers in Egypt this week. They aim to defend womens' rights in the sector, and fight for equal treatment of male and female workers in the agricultural sector. I am hopeful that this increased level of organization spills over into the political arena. 

Mahmoud Ramzy of Al Masry reports that a newly formed coalition has formed supporting Field Marshall Tantawi, current president of the SCAF, as president of the Egypt. Posters have appeared in Cairo and Alexandria. The campaign is called "Egypt Above All." Gallows humor moment: I am fluent in German, and if we translate that phrase into German, it reads Aegypten ueber alles. Not good.

Rana Khazbak reports that The Revolution Continues Coalition is composed of the January 25th Revolution Youth Coalition and six other parties, including the Socialist Popular Alliance Party, the Freedom Egypt Party, and the Islamist Egyptian Current Party (a radical youth breakoff of the MB). They aim to filed 270 candidates on party lists, and 20 individual candidates. Sixty of the coalition's candidates are women, and more than fifty percent are young people. The ideological scale of the group is predominantly leftist, but it also includes an Islamist party.

Meanwhile, Nate Wright reports that the centrist El Adl party will compete in the parliamentary elections alone. It has refused to join the MB dominated Democratic Alliance, or the Egyptian Bloc led by liberals. The party wants to move away from patronage, and towards changing ideology.

Noha El-Hennawy reports that the MB will use the slogan "We bring good for Egypt." This is a move away from their earlier slogan "Islam is the Solution." The MB heads the Democratic Alliance, which includes 11 parties. The Freedom and Justice party will now run for all seats in parliament, because of the current list based system. This contradicts a promise that they made not to run for more than 50 percent of seats earlier this year. Heba Fahmy of the Daily News says the the Democratic Alliance List includes 76 women and 2 Copts. About half of the female candidates are on the top of the list.

Finally, Heba Fahmy tells us that the political parties found the list candidacy system this weekend very disorganized and difficult, but those vying for individual seats had no problems. Okay, now I am exhausted, and my coffee is finished.