Constitution: Searching for Common Ground

By Ahmed Mansour

  At press time, the 50-member Constitutional Committee, charged with mending of the 2012 charter, is still struggling to find a common ground to satisfy all parties involved. Many of the conflicts, mostly between the Salafi Al- Nour party and liberal party representatives, are about articles such as 2 and 219 that address the role of religion in the state. The most recent debate, however, was over the controversial article that allows military trials for civilians. Human rights organizations have been calling for a complete ban on trials of civilians by the military in Egypt, but the article passed the committee with 30 members voting in favor, seven against, two abstentions, and eleven members absent. At press time PM Hazem Al-Beblawi announced that the final draft of the amended 2012 constitution was to be put to referendum in late January 2014.