Egypt’s referendum
Going the wrong way
Muhammad Morsi must accommodate the secular opposition; if necessary, the West should push him
IT LOOKS pretty certain that the constitution which Muhammad Morsi,
Egypt’s president, has presented to the people will win their
endorsement in a referendum that is being held in two stages (see article).
On December 15th a majority of voters in the ten provinces polled said
yes, though 57% of Cairo’s 6m voters said no. On December 22nd the
remaining voters, who are likely to be more conservative, will probably
grant their approval, too. Mr Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood party may
conclude they have a mandate to guide Egypt in an Islamist direction,
away from more open, permissive ways.
They would be wrong to do so. This line of thinking threatens to
plunge Egypt into a protracted period of impoverishing instability,
which in the end will hurt Islamists as much as everyone else. The more
pragmatic Islamists, perhaps including Mr Morsi, should change course
while they still have time.
Even if the constitution gets popular approval, it will not have a
ringing endorsement. Less than one-third of eligible voters are reckoned
to have turned out in the first round of the referendum, and the margin
of assent has been slim. Coptic Christians, who make up about a tenth
of Egypt’s 85m people, are unnerved by the document’s Islamist flavour,
as are many Egyptians with secular, liberal or left-wing views. And
despite the referendum results, the Brothers may be losing favour. Since
winning a clear plurality in a general election nearly a year ago,
their popularity has been dipping.
Hardline Brothers may be tempted to respond by gripping onto power
even more tightly. But the organisation that suffered so many decades of
persecution under President Hosni Mubarak should surely realise where
that may lead. Instead, Mr Morsi and his allies would do better to
respect alternative opinions and stop treating political opponents as
mortal enemies conspiring with godless Westerners to do them down.
Time to leave the streets
As a conciliatory gesture, Mr Morsi could use his powers of
appointment to ensure that parliament’s upper house, the Shura Council,
becomes more representative. Elected with only 10% of the vote, when it
was widely assumed to be a mere talking shop that would be abolished by
the new constitution, 83% of its members are Islamists, a far higher
proportion than they would win in a fair election today. Given that the
Shura Council will now be the sole legislature until fresh elections to
the lower house take place in two months’ time, it would be wise to
bring in more secular sorts and Christians. The Shura Council should
also amend the new constitution’s most blatantly sectarian and
anti-democratic clauses—such as the ones allowing the religious
establishment to meddle in legislation and giving the army exorbitant
political and budgetary perks.
The opposition, for its part, should start relying more on
negotiation and less on demonstration. Street protests were a force for
good before democracy prevailed—they toppled Mr Mubarak, after all—but
if they become a routine way to change the law and remove governments,
then Egypt will never learn how to reconcile interests and settle
disputes through everyday politics. The non-Islamist opposition, which
is coming together for the first time in a broad front, should
concentrate on preparing for the imminent general election. To compete
with Islamists at a local level, they must start tackling the urgent
bread-and-butter concerns of poor people.
The West has rightly stayed out of Egyptian politics. But, once
written, a constitution is hard to change back, so outsiders should now
voice their anxieties about the direction Mr Morsi is taking. Germany’s
government was right recently to postpone a dollop of aid until Mr Morsi
shows a greater willingness to pass the test of real democracy. The
Americans, who hand over $1.6 billion a year, should do the same.
At the start of the Arab spring, optimists hoped that liberal
democracy would sweep the region and pessimists predicted that Islamists
would grasp power and keep hold of it. Recent events have taken Egypt a
step in the pessimists’ direction. But the old system failed, in the
end, because oppressive governments that ignore their people’s views
risk getting violently overthrown. It is not too late for Mr Morsi to
show he has learned that lesson.
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