Egypt’s Islamists are bound for victory
CAIRO — One of the nettlesome quirks of Egypt’s nascent democracy was revealed early Sunday when state media reported that the country’s pro- Islamist draft constitution had won more than 56 per cent of the vote so far.
Victory for the Islamist side is inevitable. However, the timing of the partial vote count announcement was problematic because official results are not expected until the other half of the country votes next Saturday night.
Secularists and Christians opposed to the proposed constitution could take some cheer in that it was rejected by a narrow majority of Cairenes. They will likely use the result to press their demands for a more inclusive constitution.
But they should not get too carried away. Twentyfive million eligible voters in the much more conservative Nile Delta, Upper Egypt and the eastern and western deserts can cast their ballots next Saturday and everyone knows they will strongly support anything Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood proposes.
The other news to come out of Saturday’s ballot was good for all sides. Despite great fears of violence, no fighting of consequence was reported anywhere.
Talking to voters Saturday in Cairo it was unsettling to hear some flatly state that they had voted ‘ Yes’ as God had wished them to. It was the kind of remark that triggered intense debate among voters who sometimes had to wait for hours in long queues to cast their ballots. But equally antagonizing were charges by the secularists that the constitution was undemocratic because it had a pronounced Islamic slant.
Egypt has had a rough transition to its version of democracy since Hosni Mubarak was ousted from power after 30 years, but perhaps the Arab Spring variant was not as rough here as it has been in Libya or Tunisia. Mubarak and his generals were overthrown by young westernoriented secularists and Christians who opposed the proposed constitution and by Islamists, who hesitated for a while before joining that first revolutionary party rather late in the day.
Since then divisions between the Islamists and secularists that have always existed became even clearer. Weeks of passionate rallies since Morsi decreed special presidential powers for himself have paralyzed Cairo’s fragile economy as similar rallies had during Mubarak’s final days. A full blown street brawl in early December that scared almost everyone left as many as 10 men dead.
What comes next is, well, most probably more street demonstrations and uncertainty. The secularists will try to throw the Egyptian equivalent of a hail Mary pass before parliamentary elections in February that will likely seal their fate as permanent outsiders in the new Egypt. This trend was obvious in how Morsi has tried to shape a government that in some respects is eerily similar to that of Mubarak.
When the constitution is formally ratified, Islam will have a slightly larger place in political life and the courts. Morsi’s government has already started to behave as the generals did under Mubarak by appointing its own people as newspaper editors and banning some kinds of music from state television. The leadership at universities is expected to get the same, topdown treatment soon Over time secularists and Coptic Christians, who are about 10 per cent of the population, are convinced that Islamists will dominate most state and quasi- state organizations, effectively replacing has been an autocracy with a theocracy.
The one exception to this shift in power is likely to be the military. In a trade- off for tacit military backing this fall, military courts will still be allowed to try civilians if their alleged crimes harm the armed forces. Furthermore, the defence minister must be a general and the military will decide its own budget without political oversight.
Another concern of Morsi’s liberal rivals is imprecise language in the constitution that may allow the introduction of a strict form of Sharia law and an article of the document which says that the state will protect public morals. Another major complaint is that the rights of women are not mentioned.
“This is a sad day for my country,” said Abdullah Ibrahim, who drove me away from a polling station in the religiously and economically mixed neighbourhood of Shubra on Saturday where voters duked it out verbally while waiting to cast their ballots. “I supported Morsi for president but I could not bring myself to vote for him today so I abstained. There will be more trouble, for sure.”
But a young British- educated member of the Brotherhood was not wrong when he warned that the secularists and Christians already had as good a deal as they were likely to get.
“They want to pull us down, not understanding that we are actually protecting them from Salafis and other extreme Islamic groups who want to do them great harm,” Mohammed El- Horishy said. “And what the hell kind of democracy is it when they say they will fight us if they lose the vote on the constitution?”
The next acts in Egypt’s interminable political drama are to be staged early in the New Year.