With the first leg of Egypt’s constitutional referendum completed, it looks as if President Muhammad Morsi has secured the victory he had hoped for. Yet it may prove to be a hollow victory, if not the first step toward the derailment of Morsi’s troubled presidency.
On Saturday, half of Egypt’s provinces, including Cairo and Alexandria, went to the polls. The second leg takes place next Saturday, with people in the more rural provinces casting their votes.
Voting was organized in two stages because the government couldn’t persuade enough judicial personnel to supervise the referendum, as demanded by law.
An estimated 55 million Egyptians are qualified to vote, and almost 51 million registered to do so, the government reports. Half of those who could turned up on Saturday; if a similar percentage goes to the polls next weekend, the total turnout would be larger than in any parliamentary and presidential election since President Hosni Mubarak’s fall.
The government hasn’t announced official results of the first leg; it says it doesn’t want to influence voters in the second leg. But even opposition parties campaigning for a “no” admit that Morsi’s draft constitution is near-certain to pass. Estimates show that in the first leg around 54 percent voted for the draft — higher than the percentage of votes that swept Morsi to the presidency.
Yet what at first glance seems a major victory for Morsi may prove much less — and possibly his undoing.
First, the way the referendum was railroaded has reduced its credibility compared to the Post-Mubarak parliamentary and presidential elections, which took place under army supervision.
Only a quarter of those supervising the election had the legal qualifications required. More than a third hadn’t signed key documents required by electoral law.
Worse, the Interior Minisitry issued tens of thousands of badges to dubious nongovernmental groups for their members to serve as “election observers.” At some polling stations, the presence of these observers had an intimidating effect on voters. There is anecdotal evidence that some “observers” led illiterate voters into voting “yes.”
Another questionable tactic was the slowing down of voting in areas believed to favor the “no” campaign. This was especially true in Coptic Christian neighborhoods, where voters had to wait in line for hours, the official excuse being delays in the arrival of additional ballot papers.
More important, not enough time was given for the proposed draft to be debated in public and understood by the voters. This is a long document with over 200 articles, some in complicated legalese.
The opposition made the mistake of first calling for a straight boycott and thus did not spend enough time explaining why the draft may harm Egypt’s hopes for democracy. Then, less than a week before the first leg of polling, the opposition opted to take part and started campaigning for a “no” vote.
This reversal of gears confused many voters, while leaving little time to justify a “no” vote.
A simple majority is enough to pass most laws, but a constitution requires a larger consensus. It is a document designed to unite a nation around a set of fundamental rules to regulate the public space and protect the rights of citizens.
However, rather than unite Egyptians, Morsi’s draft has divided them into two camps of roughly the same size. And even the narrow majority that Morsi seems set to secure comes at the cost of a loss in the goodwill he won in the first months of his presidency.
The constitutional duel may transform Morsi into a factional leader rather than a unifying figure, while increasing his dependence on his Muslim Brotherhood base. And that would be bad news for Morsi and for Egypt.