Five more years

Egypt’s opposition has lost its fight against President Morsi’s proposed constitution.  The margin in favor will be well over 60% once the votes in the second round are made official next week.  The overall picture is not good for those who hoped to challenge Morsi.  He greatly increased his margin compared to the presidential election, and turnout in the referendum was much lower:

Bassem Sabry nevertheless sees some hope for the secularists, who have now united in the National Salvation Front (NSF) led by former IAEA chief Mohammed El Baradei.  If it manages to bring into coalition more moderate Islamists as well as more acceptable “remnants” of the Mubarak regime, it could begin to look like a serious counterbalance to Morsi’s excesses.

It will have to happen quickly.  Parliamentary elections are due two months after the new constitution comes into force.  A new electoral law is needed.  The one under which the previous elections were held was a mess.  Presumably Morsi will dictate what he wants, as he holds all legislative powers at the moment.* The time for campaigning could, I guess, be significantly less than two months.  The shorter the better for the well-organized and motivated Muslim Brotherhood (which contests elections as the Freedom and Justice Party).

Morsi has already announced his choices for one-third of the members in the upper house (Shura Council), with sparse representation of liberals, women and Christians.  Morsi seems no better at compromise than John Boehner, who stiffed President Obama last week and then couldn’t even convince the Republican caucus to back his alternative.  By contrast, Morsi’s control of Freedom and Justice seems absolute, and he has kept the Salafists and military content enough so that they have not tried to challenge him forcefully.

Egyptians are tired of revolution.  They want stability and a return to normality.  For the vast majority, this means eking out a living, difficult even in better times.  Islam appears to offer answers to many problems, not least the corruption and venality of the old regime.  Dignity, the ideal for which the revolution was fought, means something quite different to poor and illiterate Egyptians than it does to the less numerous and better educated secular liberals.  Morsi, though amply well-educated at the University of Southern California, has a far better understanding of this difference than many middle class Egyptians, who too often view the lower classes as ignorant and unworthy of choosing how the country should be run.

Egypt’s polity is going to end up tilted heavily in the direction of the Islamists unless the opposition gets its act together quickly and at least blocks them from gaining a two-thirds super majority in the lower house.  Morsi has four years in office from the time of his election in June.  If I read the constitution correctly, he cannot succeed himself.  The new parliament will have five years from the time it convenes.  While it can be dissolved, the process is a tortuous one.  Whatever happens in the parliamentary elections is going to set Egypt’s direction for a long time to come.

I am wishing the secularist liberals all the votes they can scrounge up.  They will need them if the next five years are going to be tolerable to non-Islamists in Egypt.

*PS:  I gather he intends to hand over legislative power to the Shura Council, see below.