Egypt referendum chatter

It’s quite marvelous to see an email debate underway among our Egyptian faculty about the Saturday referendum on Constitutional amendments. Watching the almost ex nihilo birth of a political culture is a rare opportunity. I’m copied on these messages just like the rest of the faculty, and of course as a non-Egyptian I have no vote, but it’s nice to witness the passionate debates among people who never had such a chance until now.

In my own social circles at the University, the “no” votes seem to have the upper hand. Their major complaint is that the changes are far too few, and especially that the President retains too much power under the proposed new Constitution. What these people seem to want is a slower process with a total overhaul of the previous Constitution.

The “yes” argument, among those I know, seems to amount to: “Let’s keep the momentum going and not slow things down.”

The Ahram Online poll showed the Referendum headed for a resounding defeat, but it’s an unscientific online poll.

Ironically, the most ardently pro-Revolution people are the ones who want the army to stay in control a bit longer. They want more time to ensure that the New Egypt (as everyone is calling it) is built on solid foundations, that there is time to organize proper political parties, and so forth. They worry that snap elections would mean ex-NDP members using their existing powerful organizations to be elected to parliament with merely cosmetic changes to their platform.

I will say this: I’m very confident about Egypt right now. Not everything has been perfect, but generally things have moved in the right direction. Most of the points that initially bothered me (“Why is Mubarak’s Prime Minister still there?”; “Why is State Security still in existence?”) have now been fixed, and we’re also seeing the army behave pretty well on the whole.

17 days of peaceful protest were enough to take down a dictatorship and send Egypt in the right direction. It’s an inspiring story, and a highly unlikely one that none of us here would have predicted at the beginning of 2011.