Can Egypt's opposition defeat Morsi's constitutional referendum?
Secularists, liberals, and Mubarak-era re-treads are joining forces against Morsi and his fellow Islamists. Do they stand a chance?
The leaders of Egypt's opposition coalition don't think Saturday's planned referendum on a constitution written by Islamists is legitimate, but they're not boycotting the vote. Instead, they're urging Egyptians to go to the polls and vote "no." They're warning the government of embattled President Mohamed Morsi and his fellow Islamists that they'll call off their plans to participate unless several conditions are met, including full judicial supervision, adequate security, and the presence of independent monitors. Most analysts think the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies will be able to muster enough votes to get this draft of the constitution passed, but opposition leaders vow to keep fighting no matter how the referendum goes. "The referendum is not the end of our journey," says Hamdeen Sabahi, a former left-nationalist presidential candidate.
The opposition has a strong hand, says Kristen Chick at The Christian Science Monitor. Large opposition protests being held on Wednesday could "encourage the judiciary to decide not to oversee the vote, which would prevent the poll from going forward." And if the vote does happen despite the chaos, Morsi's rivals can make a strong showing if they stand united.
Eventually, Morsi will have to "reach out to Egyptians — including Christians, secularists and women — who feel they have been excluded from a revolution they helped create," says The Los Angeles Times in an editorial. But if his rivals have to be united to block this constitution, they're sunk.
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The dictatorial power grab that Morsi used to push through this draft constitution certainly stirred up plenty of anger, says Wadah Khanfar at Britain's The Guardian. In fact, it did something that seemed impossible a year ago — it united secularists and liberals with holdovers from the Mubarak era they so recently pushed from power.
The constitution, which "very few of the demonstrators, on either side, are likely to have read," isn't what matters, says Ellis Goldberg at Foreign Policy. It has some elements the liberals don't like — it gives the government power to "protect ethics and morality," which secularists find particularly dangerous in Islamist hands, it fails to ban discrimination against women, and it allows military trials by civilians. Still, what matters is how the constitution gets interpreted after it's adopted. And the Mubarak-era judges Morsi is feuding with don't exactly trust him right now.
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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.
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