Article 5.
The Daily Star
Egypt's new Constitution: an update
Nathan Brown
March 29, 2011 -- The March 19 vote in favor of constitutional amendments in Egypt provides a boost to the military-led transition process and its vigorous electoral schedule.
The voter turnout was impressive by Egyptian standards — 41 percent of eligible voters, at least double the turnout in any previous national election or referendum — and the victory was overwhelming at 77 percent of voters. But opponents attracted enough votes to make the outcome seem less like the predictable landslides of the authoritarian order. Those who objected to the content of the amendments and, more forcefully, to the process by which they were written and the political sequence they implied marshaled forceful arguments, campaigned hard, and then lost.
As a consequence, Egypt’s transition process will likely rush forward. What are the next steps? The basic sequence of events is clear, but the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has not revealed many of the details. Nor has it shared decision-making power over the sequence and rules in any serious way.
The amended articles — most of them governing presidential and parliamentary elections — are now clearly in effect. But the rest of Egypt’s Constitution remains suspended. Egypt’s military rulers have suggested that they will very shortly issue a declaration indicating how authority will be exercised while Egypt’s Parliament and president are elected, which parts of the 1971 Constitution will be brought back into effect, and what their own role will be.
The committee that drafted the amendments also prepared amendments to various laws in order to bring them into conformance
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