Egypt....A Permenant Emergency State?

Very interesting developments out of Egypt. The Egyptian populous is voting on sweeping changes to the constitution. The interesting thing about this is that even though Egypt has been a police state since the assassination of Anwar Al Sadat, the country's constitution still possessed many of the rights of the citizens and limited the government's powers. Since the assassination of Sadat, the leader who made the historic peace with Israel, the country has been running under Emergency Laws which gives the government broad powers that trumps the human rights, government limitations, etc. as long as the country is deemed to be "under attack"....very similar to the Anti-Terrorism Laws in the US but much broader. The problem is the country has been run under these Emergency since 1981!!! The ruling party and the leader has been the same since then with no prospect of change anytime soon. Today the government wants to change the constitution to be in sync with their current practice.

The government claims that these amendments were done in order to better reflect the current state of the country and to better serve the people. They state that it was also done as a response to the rise of religious extremism and to protect the country of political powers gained through religious exploitation.


There are three controversial areas of proposed change. One would ultimately allow broad powers to monitor and detain people accused of terrorist activities while not specifically defining terrorism. Another would limit the role of judges in monitoring elections, which are often mired in accusations of fraud. And a third would prohibit the creation of any religious political parties.

The Muslim Brotherhood among other organizations have organized demonstration rallies to encourage the populous to reject the amendments claiming that such amendments will make Egypt a permanent police state.

It is interesting that the country is voting on 34 changes with three significant changed sandwiched in there. It makes it very hard to sort out which amendment is important and which one was just a minor one. Egyptians polled didn't know really what they are voting for. Thus serious changes to the constitution are going to be made without many who voted knowing how significant they are.

Official Website of the Egyptian Government

Article on the Amendments

BBC Analysis