Process matters

Egypt’s latest constitutional declaration, which is intended to lay out a roadmap for elections within six months, is a mistake.  Admittedly it is just the most recent in a long series, but that doesn’t make it any less serious.

First the bare facts: just before midnight Monday, the interim president, Adly Mansour, issed a constitutional declaration

…laying out a transitional road map that called for the immediate formation of a 10-person committee to revise the charter approved in December. The panel would be composed of six judges chosen by three top courts — two from each — along with four Egyptian law professors. It was unclear who would pick the four professors.

The committee is expected to complete its revisions in about a month and then pass them to a larger committee of 50 people representing various government institutions, syndicates and social groups as well as other prominent figures. Some representatives would be selected by their institutions and the others chosen by Mr. Mansour and his cabinet. The military and the police would both pick representatives.

If approved by the larger committee, the revisions would move to a public referendum after about three months, followed in about two more weeks by parliamentary elections. Mr. Mansour’s plan called for presidential elections about three months after ratification of the new charter.

Sure it can be done.  It shouldn’t take ten constitutional experts even a month to write a pristine new constitution or revise the existing one.  But a closed-door process of this sort is bound to run into difficulty.

A constitution is not an expert dossier.  It is a document that expresses a country’s values, then determines how power is to be distributed in order to achieve national aspirations.  In a conflicted society, which Egypt certainly is today, a constitution should be written in an open and transparent process, one that provides for ample public participation and consultation. That’s why Yemen is spending six months in a national dialogue, before even embarking on writing a constitution.  It’s why South Africa spent several years writing its post-apartheid constitution.  Six months, with the drafting behind closed doors by a committee of experts, is not going to lead to a satisfactory result.

Won’t the larger committee of 50 be sufficient?  No.  That is far too narrow a consultation, even if somehow the composition of the committee reflected perfectly the diverse strains of the Egyptian polity.  But there will surely be disputes over who should be in the committee, which will have difficulty attracting Muslim Brotherhood and possibly even Salafi participation.  There is no hope in Egypt today for writing a consitution that lacks the fingerprints of the Islamists.  Even if the words they prefer are used (as they are more often than not in the constitutional declaration), they will object on procedural grounds and ask for more, as well as delay.

Why the rush?  Certainly Egyptians are anxious to normalize the situation and get on with business.  But my guess is that the international community is pressuring the military to move quickly to get to new elections.  That will relieve the Americans of their self-imposed requirement to cut off aid because of the coup.  I can hear the diplomats now:  “Surely by now you all know what should be in the constitution; just get on with it so we can keep the assistance flowing.”

Process matters.  Not the least of the problems the coup creates is this rush to get back to civilian rule.  But you reap what you sow, and you reap it only when it is ripe.  True democrats in Egypt will recognize these problems, reject this hurried process and insist on the open, participatory and transparent constitution-writing that is today best practice.  So will their friends in the US.  Only that will produce the kind of legitimate and credible document all Egyptians can accept.