Egyptian oppositional youth refused to attend the Presidential Constitution meeting

Egyptian Constitution

The youth representatives of six Egyptian oppositional parties released a joint statement on Monday, 5 November 2012, where they apologized for their refusal to attend the meeting with the President and his advisory team regarding the drafting of the future Constitution.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy initiated to hold the negotiations with his advisory team and diverse political parties and forces to discussed the draft of the future Egyptian Constitution proposed by the current Constituent Assembly. Fourteen different political forces have received the official invitations to participate in the talks scheduled in a few days and to also send their youth’s representatives. But six of them have refused to attend the meeting.

Among those parties refused to meet the presidential advisors are Constitution Party, Egyptian Current Party, Socialist Popular Alliance Party, Egyptian Social Democratic Party, Free Egypt Party and Free Egyptians Party. Their youth’s wings refused to participate in the planned meeting with the presidential advisory team as they refuse the current formation of the Constituent Assembly tasked with drafting the new Constitution.

They stated that they cannot accept the initial draft of the Constitution created by the current drafting body, because this Constituent Assembly is strongly influenced by the Islamist forces and also does not represent the diversity of Egyptian society.

The young representatives of those political forces called to form the new Constituent Assembly which will be the representative body ensuring the drafting of the Constitution which will represent all the Egyptian citizens and will guarantee them their rights and freedoms.

The young members of the parties stressed that this point of view has been already revealed by their party’s members and have been also communicated between them and the presidential team. So the young activists do not see any need to participate such meetings until President will not announce his official position regarding this issue.

The scheduled and expected to be held in a few days meeting initiated by the presidential team does not respect the position of the liberal parties which have already voiced their concerns and expressed their demands regarding the forming of the new representative Constituent Assembly and the process of drafting the state’s main document. In addition to that this meeting does not offer any opportunities for the forces oppositional to Islamists to work productive.

Egypt's Constituent Assembly

The parties’ joint statement also says as a conclusion that those parties are calling for those planning to attend the meeting to voice these demands and points during the negotiations.

It’s worth mentioning, that already on Sunday President Mohamed Morsy has reached agreement on almost 90% of the chapters of the proposed draft of the Constitution with the leaders of different Egyptian parties. This statement was made by Yasser Ali, the official Presidential spokesperson.

We would remind that the process of drafting the future Constitution of Egypt became very complicated as the powers cannot reach an agreement on a lot of points. The current Constituent Assembly is strongly dominated by the Islamist forces (almost the same like the first one which was dissolved). In addition to that the current drafting body is still waiting for the High Constitutional Court’s sentence regarding the question of the constitutionality of the body.

The process of drafting the Constitution is very controversial and caused a lot of worries and concerns, especially among the leftist, liberal and other secular forces. The current Constituent Assembly is accused of being unrepresentative body, and the draft of the Constitution is expected to be potentially limiting the freedoms and human rights of the citizens and also deteriorating of the situation with the women’s rights, rights of the minorities and restricting the freedom of expression and religious beliefs etc. The chapters dedicated to the forms of the administration and powers and authorities of different branches of power have been also strongly criticized.