Call grows for new constitution

One of Egypt’s leading opposition figures has pledged continued resistance to his nation’s Islamist-oriented constitution, even if it is declared to have passed, contending that the process was fundamentally illegitimate.

Unofficial tallies say nearly two-thirds voted in favour of the draft constitution, but turnout was so low that opponents are arguing that the vote should be discounted.

Hamdeen Sabahi, who was third in the nation’s first free presidential race this year, said yesterday that the majority of Egypt’s people were not Islamists. He argued that the string of election triumphs by President Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood group was caused by unfair electoral practices and key mistakes by the liberal opposition, particularly a lack of unity and organisation.

‘‘The Muslim Brotherhood is a minority — this is for sure. They get majority votes because of division within the opposition. If there is transparency [in voting] and unity among civil groups, then surely the majority will turn from the Brotherhood.’’

Sabahi said the Islamist groups in the country ‘‘have tried to steal’’ the revolution that toppled authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak nearly two years ago – ‘‘but we will prevent them’’.

The National Salvation Front – a union of key opposition forces that coalesced in the fight against the draft constitution – was not calling for civil disobedience in rejection of the Islamist-drafted constitution, but for a new constitution through peaceful means, Sabahi said. The path toward such an outcome appears uncertain at best – especially as Sabahi rejected the notion, somewhat plausible in Egypt, of the military stepping in to undo the inconvenient outcomes of politics.

In a sign of the opposition leadership’s efforts to coalesce, Sabahi said the grouping would be led in the interim by Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the Vienna-based United Nations nuclear agency. No confirmation of that was available from ElBaradei.

The silver-maned, charismatic former journalist seemed to embody the frustrations of liberal Egyptians today. While championing the democracy and lauding the 2011 revolution that felled Mubarak, they reject the outcome of that revolution, yet seem at something of a loss to cause a change of course.

Tens of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets weeks before the referendum to demand that a new assembly with greater diversity write the charter. Instead, an Islamist-dominated assembly hurriedly passed it before a court could rule on the body’s legitimacy, and Morsi himself issued decrees, later rescinded, that gave him near absolute powers to push the constitution to a referendum.

Critics say the new constitution seeks to entrench Islamic rule in Egypt and that the charter does not sufficiently protect the rights of women and minority groups.