Ellis Goldberg writes: President Mohamed Morsi and his advisors cannot have expected that his November 22 constitutional declaration would throw Egypt into a renewed state of turmoil. That it has speaks volumes to the immense changes that have occurred in the country during the past two years. Morsi’s support for President Barack Obama’s truce initiative during the fighting in Gaza clearly reassured the U.S. president that under a Muslim Brotherhood (MB) president Egypt would keep the peace with Israel. Because this has been the dominant concern within the U.S. foreign policy elite about the Egyptian revolution, Morsi had good reason to believe that the United States and the Egyptian Armed Forces would not object to his domestic decisions.

That Morsi’s move has proven, in a deeply divided country, to have been a serious error of judgment is worth reflection. Early responses, especially in the United States, have either been self-satisfied sighs of recognition that the MB have finally revealed their true nature or, alternatively, sharp criticism of a westernized liberal minority that refused to accept gracefully the verdict of democracy mandating a stronger role for Islam, the MB, and Morsi himself.

Divisions among U.S. commentators mirror divisions in Egypt. Many Morsi supporters argue that the new constitution is the most democratic one ever produced on Egyptian soil. It guarantees the right to start parties and open newspapers without prior approval; it bans torture and espouses the dignity of the prisoner. Opponents argue, in contrast, that it is an extremely bad constitution. It gives unelected religious figures the right of prior review of legislation and it allows the Armed Forces to function independently.

Let us, if only for argument, grant some truth in each of these pictures. The question still is why has there been such a vast outrush of anger at Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, whose candidate he was, and why has it been sustained now for more than a week and a half. There have been demonstrations not only in Cairo and Alexandria but in most of the large provincial cities, with protesters numbering in the tens of thousands. Morsi rescinded his original constitutional decree on Saturday, issuing a new one, which addressed some issues of contention. Regardless, protests have raged, with calls for fresh demonstrations on Tuesday.

For the moment we can only go on impressions, however the political divisions appear, for the first time, to be linked to social conflict. Reports from the textile capital, Mahallah, in the middle of the Egyptian Delta, are that protesters took over the city hall and declared themselves independent of what they called “the Muslim Brothers government.” Leaders of the insurgent trade union movements there have long evinced opposition to the MB, which has sought to gain control of their movement. In 1981 Assiut was the scene of an uprising designed to create an Islamic emirate by supporters of Abbud al-Zumr, one of the organizers of the assassination of Anwar Sadat and today a prominent Salafi politician. On December 6, thousands of people there marched to protest against Morsi behind a banner calling for Muslim-Christian unity. In Port Said, as elsewhere, already a week ago there were pitched battles between youth opposed to the MB and their members.

So a useful question is why, not quite two years after massive and sustained demonstrations led to the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak, are hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, of Egyptians out on the streets again? If the opposition politicians are shallow and self-interested, why is anyone heeding their calls? And yet why, if the Brotherhood represents the overwhelming majority of Egyptians — whether democratic or authoritarian in their inner beings — are they faced with such massive anger? Observers of attacks on their offices and members agree that — regrettable as such attacks may be — they are largely spontaneous. The police, it is true, often do not protect the MB but they seem long since to have decided to vanish whenever violence threatens anywhere.

The answer no longer lies in a draft constitution that very few of the demonstrators, on either side, are likely to have read. Egyptians along with the citizens of a great many other places have learned what is on paper is only a part of the constitution. The other, most important, part lies in the institutions that give the constitutional language presence in everyday life. To some degree this means the habits and choices of low level officials and to some degree it means the courts. And the simple and sad reality for the Brotherhood is that a great many Egyptians distrust, dislike, or fear them and worry that, having come to control the legislature and central executive, they plan to take over the courts as well as staff many of the lower levels of the government.

President Morsi has been unable to allay this distrust, fear, and dislike and over the last week he and his allies have, through words and actions, intensified it. This may be unfair and its results may be tragic, but it remains a profoundly political issue with which he and any Egyptian politicians who aspire to lead the country will ultimately have to deal. [Continue reading…]

Ahram Online: Founder of the influential April 6 movement, Ahmed Maher, charges that President Mohamed Morsi is attempting to push an “illegitimate” constitution through at any price – and as soon as possible.

Maher posted on his official Facebook page late Sunday that although the executive branch uses the excuse that they are complying with the March 2011 constitutional declaration stipulations by insisting the referendum be held on 15 December, he argues that that declaration has already been breached several times.

Many opposition forces and activists have denounced the draft constitution as “illegitimate,” having been drawn up by a largely controversial Islamist constituent assembly, which saw fifteen – the majority of which were non-Islamist – of its 100 members withdraw.

Human Rights Watch: The law that President Mohamed Morsy of Egypt issued on December 9, 2012, grants the military authority to arrest civilians and refer them to military courts until results are announced in the scheduled December 15 constitutional referendum. Morsy should immediately amend the law to prohibit trials of civilians before military courts and require the military to promptly hand over any detained civilians to civilian prosecutors.

Law No. 107 of 2012, the 11th law Morsy has issued since taking over legislative authority from the military in August, grants law enforcement powers to the armed forces without any protections against the referral of civilians for military trials. Past Human Rights Watch research, primarily during military rule, found that military involvement in law enforcement was accompanied by serious abuses including excessive use of force, torture, and sexual assault.

“Any deployment of the Egyptian military to help maintain security needs to be accompanied by guarantees to respect basic rights,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “President Morsy should be ending, not expanding, military trials of civilians.”

Al-Masry Al-Youm: Opposition parties and movements are preparing for the constitutional referendum on 15 December, with the April 6 Youth Movement mobilizing voters to reject the draft while the National Salvation Front will decide Tuesday if it would call for a boycott or a “no” vote.

April 6 launched the “Your Constitution Does Not Represent Us” campaign on Monday to educate citizens on the failures of the draft constitution and the dangers of rushing into a national referendum.

The movement urged citizens to vote against the new constitution on 15 December.

Movement member Engy Hamdy said in a statement that the campaign aims to mobilize the largest possible number of voters against the constitution, because “it contravenes the revolution’s demands for pluralism, power transition and social justice.”

“Ours is a counter-campaign to that of the Islamists,” she added. “They use religious slogans to manipulate the feelings of the masses.”

“We want a constitution that represents all Egyptians,” Hamdy continued.

AFP reports: President Mohamed Morsi has ordered Egypt’s army from Monday to take on police powers — including the right to arrest civilians — in the run-up to a vote on a constitution that has triggered bloodshed.

The decree takes effect on the eve of mass rival protests on the referendum that is to be staged on Saturday, and follows street clashes that have left seven people dead and hundreds injured.

It orders the military to fully cooperate with police “to preserve security and protect vital state institutions for a temporary period, up to the announcement of the results from the referendum,” according to a copy of the decree obtained by AFP.

Army officers “all have powers of legal arrest,” it says.

The military, which ruled Egypt between former president Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in February 2011 to Morsi’s election in June 2012, has sought to remain neutral in the political crisis.

But it has warned it “will not allow” the situation to deteriorate, and urged both sides to dialogue.

Army tanks and troops have since Thursday deployed around Morsi’s presidential palace. But they have not confronted thousands of protesters who have gathered there every night.

The opposition, made up of secular, liberal, leftwing and Christian groups, has said it will escalate its protests to scupper the referendum.

It views the new constitution, largely drawn up by Morsi’s Islamist allies, as undermining human rights, the rights of women, religious minorities, and curtailing the independence of the judiciary.

Nathan Brown writes: The final draft of Egypt’s proposed new constitution, completed in late November, was produced in such a flurry of political maneuvering, threats, and shrill rhetoric that commentators and citizens alike are still trying to understand its implications. From a liberal democratic perspective, there is much to like in the document, especially compared with the one it is replacing. For example, the drafters not only specified a long list of freedoms, as their predecessors did, but also made the wording more difficult for officials to wiggle around. But the document includes just as much that causes concern. It postpones answering the question of civilian oversight of the military until the next constitution is written, years from now. And there are gaping holes and ambiguities that only politics can fill in.

And that is the critical point so often missed: political context always shapes the meaning of constitutional texts. The Arab world’s experience with apparently democratic constitutional provisions confirms the rule. Democracy has failed in the Arab world not because governments have routinely violated their countries’ highest laws (although they have occasionally cheated) but, rather, because their constitutions’ democratic promises have generally been as vague as possible and were left to parliaments to flesh out through regular statutes. European countries first developed that system to ensure that popularly elected bodies, not kings, would define basic rights. When Arab regimes copied the practice — for example, many of them proclaimed freedom of the press but explained that the freedom would be “defined by law” — the effect was that rulers could pledge all kinds of rights and let rubber-stamp parliaments rob them of all meaning.

It is thus important to view the new Egyptian constitution as a political document — a product of specific circumstances that will not merely shape a future set of circumstances but also function within them. [Continue reading…]

Rami G Khouri writes: The tumultuous road to a stable democratic system of government in Egypt is passing through one of its most decisive stages these days, with most of the main political actors revealing their amateurism more than anything else. This is a hard but necessary learning process, as the main protagonists refuse to accept that hard-line and absolutist positions are inappropriate during this delicate transition.

For all the heartening talk about their shared commitment to democratic pluralism, the dominant Muslim Brotherhood and most of the other leading Egyptian political groups are demonstrating the problems arising from a fast transition from autocracy to democracy, without a transition period in which people and organizations learn how to function in a democratic system. Personality has much to do with this.

The Muslim Brotherhood leaders who have spent much of the last 25 years in and out of jail were catapulted into the presidency without any previous experience in managing national politics. President Mohammad Mursi is revealing his inability to act as the president of all Egyptians and the shepherd of a historic constitutional transition in which basic governance institutions are being built. Unlike Nelson Mandela who spent decades in jail and then showed his compassion, flexibility and statesmanship when he became president of South Africa, Mursi seems focused on pushing through his agenda (presumably also the Brotherhood’s) and is unable at this stage to act as the magnanimous leader of all Egyptians.

He has made five main mistakes so far: unilaterally issuing the constitutional decree in November that shielded him from all judicial oversight; being two days late in addressing the nation after mass demonstrations turned into clashes around his presidential compound; refusing to make any meaningful gestures to the significant opposition that has been expressed to his constitutional moves; ramming through the referendum on the draft constitution in two weeks; and not working with his colleagues to tone down the response of Muslim Brotherhood supporters to the anti-Mursi demonstrations. [Continue reading…]

Egypt’s Daily News reports: President Mohamed Morsy used his legislative powers to pass a law on Sunday, enacting stricter penalties against street vendors who violate the law.

Under the new law, numbered 105/2012, vendors can now be sentenced to six months imprisonment, be fined up to EGP 5,000 and have their goods confiscated.

The new measures in prison time and fines represent a significant jump from what had been implemented in the past.

Prior laws stipulate that vendors sell their goods in designated areas throughout Cairo. However, many street vendors operate unlicensed, often without repercussions.

Egypt’s informal economy stands as a valuable source of income to many citizens and accounts for anywhere between 20 and 50 per cent of the total economy.

(For those in the U.S. who have forgotten his name, Mohamed Bouazizi was the Tunisian street vendor whose death sparked the Arab Spring.)