Alongside a hysterical campaign in all the provinces of Egypt, a campaign that has cost millions, and that urges Egyptians to vote “Yes” to the amended constitution – the ruling coalition that took power on 3 July is trying to divert the people’s rebellion against the failed and despotic rule of the Muslim Brotherhood in order to establish its own despotic military regime supported by a business elite. The coalition is exploiting the people’s rejection of the Brotherhood to raise the old slogan of Mubarak and, later, Morsi: “It’s me, or chaos”.
This Constitution is but the first step on a road-map that seeks – using an organized media campaign scaring people with the possible return of the Brotherhood – to quickly place General Sisi or his representative on the seat of power.
This Constitution is as divorced as possible from the aims of the January Revolution and its later waves: Bread, Freedom, Social Justice and Human Dignity.
This new Constitution aims primarily to entrench the position of the military as a state within a state - unsupervised by the people. Parliament will not be able to discuss the military’s budget, or their economic enterprises - unique among the armies of the world - in which hundreds of thousands of young people toil as virtually indentured labour. The military’s budget will continue to be presented to parliament as one total figure with no details and will be ratified by the Defence Council which enjoys a military majority (Article 203).
The new Constitution will also indemnify the position of Minister of Defence; the elected President will be unable to appoint or dismiss a Minister of Defence except with the agreement of the Generals of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Article 234). The new Constitution allows for the military trials for civilians as a weapon to be used against those who criticize or oppose them (Article 204).
The Constitution has not addressed any of the issues surrounding the Ministry of the Interior: it does not propose restructuring it as a civil institution to preserve order but has retained it as a semi-military institution that protects the regime, represses freedom and subjugates the people.
As for the businessmen who have supported the Generals with their newspapers and their media channels, their reward has been the confirmation of the capitalist orientation of a regime that serves an elite who have looted the wealth of the country for years. It has also rewarded them by permitting the privatization of public utilities like transport, railways, electricity and water (Article 32) against the interests of the impoverished majority.
The Constitution has also expropriated the organizational freedoms of workers and professionals and destroyed the independent unions which they fought for years to establish. It thus steps back several years in favour of mega-unions that hold allegiance to power – with each profession allowed only one union (Article 77).
Much is absent from this Constitution. Most importantly, a system for transitional justice that calls to account everyone who has committed a crime against the people whether by corruption or theft or murder.
Also absent from this Constitution are the rights of millions of temporary workers to permanent employment, the rights of millions of farmers sinking under a weight of debt, the rights of the residents of informal neighbourhoods – and despite the cosmetic increases in government spending on health and education, even these have been postponed to the 2016/2017 budget (Article 238).
This is, unarguably, the Constitution of the counter-revolution, as was the Brotherhood Constitution in 2012. The difference between them is only in the degree to which they are against the people.
If the Brotherhood’s Constitution - voted in by 10 million people in a search for stability – did not prevent the overthrow of the Brotherhood after just a few months in power, so this Constitution that seeks to establish a military, classist rule will not protect those who produced it.
The Road of the Revolution Front, Thuwwar, appeals to you to vote “No” to the Constitution of the counter-revolution, and to demand the election of a Founding Committee to write a Constitution for the Egyptian Revolution; a Constitution committed to the aims of the Revolution and establishing the authority of the people over all institutions, including the military, whose role must be removed from politics and limited to the protection and defence of the borders. A Constitution that endorses the redistribution of wealth to privilege the millions of impoverished Egyptians.
We invite everyone who was, one day, among the company of revolutionaries, and who was deceived by the lies of the ruling authority, to revise their position and look clearly at the false propaganda around the claimed increase of the margin of freedoms in this Constitution. Away from the rhetoric of “the independence of the judiciary” and “the police protects the people and works for their security” and “the state guarantees the rights of the citizen” – and they are all slogans at odds with what we see every day, slogans violated by the daily practices of the despotic police state – the aims of the Revolution will not be realized by a regime that kills citizens and imprisons and tortures them. Its allies today will be the first to suffer its abuses tomorrow – this is the habit of fascist regimes.
Even though the people overthrew Mubarak and his gang, and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and Morsi and his people – all in less than 3 years, the obtuse regime tries once again to put the people in front of two despotic options: the Brotherhood or the Military.
We are certain that the people will continue with their revolution, perhaps sooner than this coalition expects. Even if they succeed in ratifying the Constitution, as the Brotherhood did before them, it will not protect them from the people’s anger, smouldering beneath the ashes of the regime’s lies.
No to the Constitution of the military and their allies. Yes to the ongoing revolution.
The Road of the Revolution Front – Thuwwar
6 January 2014
No to a constitution that does not realize the aims of the revolution
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