Pros And Cons: Clash Of The Constitutions

Clash of the Constitutions- Draft One Imagine living in a land where the Church and the State are not separated. Imagine living in a land where regime corruption and oppression are present too often. Imagine living in a world where basic human rights are ignored and embezzled. For Americans, it seems a hard thing to imagine since America grants its citizens the basic rights and religion is not mixed in with the government, but in Egypt this is a natural occurrence. However, recently, Egypt passed a new constitution. After reading and interpreting Egypt’s old constitution, the government has decided to abolish it and start anew. Of course, like every major political act, there would be some protest. These people believe that Egypt was better

The good thing is that many people chose to be a part of the voting and have their say in such an important matter. In fact, “[the] new Egyptian constitution has been backed by 98.1% of people who voted in a referendum, officials say” (Reynolds). This huge turnout proves that many of the citizens were waiting for this to happen, and they support this change in their country. Voting is a long process that the Egyptians were willing to go through. Eligible voters were expected to take time to study the issues and candidates, discuss these issues and candidates at public meetings, and then carefully weigh the relevant information before deciding how to vote. Despite the long process, they did input their voice, which leads to a more successful democratic state. There were many changes to the constitution, but the few noticeable ones were “[t]he president may serve two four-year terms and can be impeached by parliament, Islam remains the state religion - but freedom of belief is absolute, giving some protection to minorities, [t]he state guarantees "equality between men and women", [p]arties may not be formed based on "religion, race, gender or geography", [m]ilitary to appoint [defense for the] minister for next eight years” (Reynolds). This is a great change for the Egyptians, but not to the Americans. For Americans, this is an everyday right since the Declaration of

The same people who were interviewed in the last paragraph also said many downfalls regarding their current president. An activist in Ismailia, Mona Sleem, a Muslim woman, has many precise arguments. As stated before, the president has been in power for over one hundred days, but “Egyptians haven't gained anything over the last 100 days. All we have received are verbal promises, while the media sell us the idea that al-Sisi is the [savior]. Electricity, health, transport, water and security - none of these problems has seen any real improvement” (Egypt- Sleem). The people are unhappy with the results of the new president, who had the chance of becoming president due to the new constitution. Moreover, Mona Sleem believes that the projects “have given Egyptians hope but not a real reward” (Egypt- Sleem). This shows that her and Ms. Zakaria, mentioned in the previous paragraph, are sustaining completely different opinions on the same subject matter. If the country is not in unison over such an enormous project, how are the officials supposed to keep peace? However with this new constitution, there are not many loopholes for the officials to go through. Before, when the old constitution was in use, citizens “do not actually have to do anything wrong […] to get picked up by the cops” (Bradley 118). In the past, there were many loopholes that the officers could go through. Now, there is a part in the constitution that protects everyone