The committee charged with drafting amendments to the Egyptian constitution issued its proposals yesterday. They are now up for public discussion and will eventually be submitted to a referendum.

The amendments are mainly concerned with preventing the recurrence of another Mubarak-style presidency (a full-scale re-draft of the constitution is promised during the next parliament). Given that they are written mainly with the coming presidential election in mind, the proposals are a big step in the right direction though the long-term need is to shift power significantly away from the presidency and towards a freely-elected parliament.

Reuters, al-Masry al-Youm and the Muslim Brotherhood's websiteexplain the proposals in English, while masrawy.com has the text in Arabic. For comparison, the existing constitution is here.

A few comments on the proposals:

Presidential qualifications: Most Arab constitutions make various stipulations regarding who can become president, in the apparent belief that voters would elect someone unsuitable if given half a chance. It's reasonable to expect that any elected president should be an Egyptian citizen but I'm not sure that even that needs to be spelled out. Is it really conceivable that some passing tourist would decide to stand – and then get elected?

The new draft removes the 40-year age qualification but toughens up the nationality requirements: besides being born to two Egyptian parents, presidents must also not be married to a foreign wife. (Someone suggested on Twitter yesterday that this is a deliberate insertion to bar Ahmed Zewail, the Nobel-winning scientist, from the presidency).

The "no foreign wife" rule also also seems to assume that future presidents will always be male – unless it's saying that it's OK for a female president to have a foreign husband.

Presidential candidates: The proposed rules make it easier to nominate candidates who have parliamentary or party backing. An alternative route to nomination is by collecting signatures from 30,000 voters in about half the country's governorates. That's a lot of signatures, but a candidate who was incapable of collecting them would probably have no hope of winning a presidential election anyway. Difficulties could arise, though, if someone decided to challenge the validity of the signatures: checking all 30,000 of them could easily take weeks – by which time the election would presumably be over.

Term limits: The presidential term is reduced from six years to four, with a limit of two consecutive terms. The drafting should be tightened up, since it appears to allow an unlimited number of non-consecutive terms. I'm thinking here of the Putin/Medvedev double act in Russia, where Putin continued to run the country as prime minister after he had to step down from the presidency. Perhaps there should be a provision barring any Egyptian ex-president from holding further elected offices.

Vice-president: Under the draft rules, a new president must appoint a deputy within 60 days. Mubarak's refusal to appoint a deputy (until a few days before he was forced out of office) was a major bone of contention, but the current proposal could lead to an unelected person running the country. A better solution might be for presidential candidates to announce a vice-presidential running-mate before the election (as in the United States), so that voters know where they stand.

Supervision of elections: The new draft restores full judicial supervision – a good move, though of course it does also require a fully independent judiciary.

Eligibility for parliament: The supreme constitutional court will have the power to disqualify members of parliament. Previously, the NDP used its parliamentary majority to ignore court rulings on eligibility.

Emergency laws: The draft rules make it more difficult for a president to impose a long-term state of emergency (as happened under Mubarak).

International treaties: In future, these will need parliamentary approval. The sub-text here is Sadat's unpopular treaty with Israel.

Reuters provides a variety of reactions to the proposals from Egyptian opposition activists and analysts. Meanwhile, Mohamed El-Baradei is pursuing a somewhat different track as the way forward. He set out his thoughts in an article for the Financial Times last week. To read it, you'll have to register with the FT's website but the Egyptian Chronicles blog summarises its key points 
here.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 27 Feb 2011