By Rania Al Malky
CAIRO: The Wikipedia definition describes a gladiator as an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic through violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their legal and social standing and their lives by appearing in the arena. Most were despised as slaves, schooled under harsh conditions, socially marginalized, and segregated even in death.
The analogy between the sordid Roman sport and Egypt’s political arena today is enticing and generally apt, especially when it comes to the twisted entertainment value. As leading political powers fight it out to the death, the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, wielding as much power as did its ousted former chief, looks on with sadistic pleasure, knowing full well that the fierce confrontations only serve to consolidate its own position as the ultimate architect of Egypt’s political transition.
It’s hard to justify the senseless ideological head-butting poisoning the air in Cairo today. But while it was acceptable when political forces ranging from the extreme right to the extreme left were slugging it out, it is not acceptable for an interim, caretaker Cabinet to get involved, and worse still, to take sides.
There is no explanation why Cabinet has once more rekindled the divisive debate over introducing binding supra-constitutional principles meant to inform the drafting of Egypt’s new constitution.
Most political powers, even those who have relentlessly called for drafting the constitution first, have agreed that this would be a violation of the results of the March referendum on constitutional amendments which charted a clear path towards drafting the new constitution.
The middle ground solution that had gained overwhelming consensus was to draft a set of non-binding guidelines — something akin to the US Bill of Rights — that will inform the constituent assembly tasked with drafting the new charter; as well as guidelines on how this assembly will be chosen both from within the elected parliament and from outside it to ensure that it is as representative as possible of all Egypt’s political currents and religious groups.
Instead of discussing such legitimate and vital basic frameworks, including the working mechanism of the constituent assembly itself — the transparency of the proceedings of the assembly, the system of approving individual articles, whether by consensus or absolute majority and the time window made available for public debate of the final draft — the political players are falling into the SCAF’s well-crafted trap.
It will come as no surprise if the proposed document will give powers to the army to safeguard the vague notion of the “civil state”, ironically the counter of a military state where the rule of law prevails. It will also come as no surprise if the army also stipulates financial autonomy for itself and protection from public scrutiny of their budgets and huge investments.
It seems that the fringe groups of so-called liberals, who spare no opportunity to prop themselves up as the ultimate democrats, only voice demands that display nothing less than complete oblivion of the basic pillars of a democratic process.
Friday’s Tahrir iftar and protest “for the love of Egypt” and a civil state, is an ill-conceived tit-for-tat to respond to the July 29 Salafi showing in the iconic square which can only lead to more divisions and more gloating from SCAF.
Whether one is disappointed in the liberals, skeptical of the Brotherhood, heartened by the Sufis or anxious about the Salafis, it is vital at this point that the Egyptian people as a whole emerge victorious as they did on Feb. 11.
The more these Friday protests are repeated for no other purpose than to settle political scores, the less effective they will become and the less they can be best utilized when a real show of national unity is necessary to fight more potent threats to Egypt’s revolution.
Let’s not turn into the little boy who cried wolf.
Rania Al Malky is the Chief Editor of Daily News Egypt.
