GENEVA, Dec 07, 2012 (AFP)
UN human rights chief Navi Pillay on Friday criticised Egypt’s draft constitution and expressed sympathy for those protesting the way it had been drawn up.
“I believe people are right to be very concerned,” Pillay said Friday, pointing to “the way the process has been short-circuited,” as well as “some of the elements included in, or missing from, the draft text.”
Her comments came amid fears of more clashes after clashes between supporters and opponents of Egypt’s Islamist President Mohamed Morsi left seven dead and more than 600 injured on Wednesday.
While Pillay welcomed Morsi’s call late Thursday for dialogue, she lamented that “no significant progress on the core issues relating to the constitution” had been made.
The anti-Morsi camp is furious with Morsi for having assumed sweeping powers two weeks ago. They object too to what they say was the way an Islamist-dominated panel of the draft constitution railroaded through the text.
Morsi has called a referendum on the controversial charter for December 15.
“The lack of inclusive participation of various actors in Egypt in the constitution-drafting process is a matter of major concern, and one of the main reasons for the disastrous situation that has been developing in Egypt over the past couple of weeks,” Pillay said in a statement.
She acknowledged that the draft constitution contained some positive developments, including limiting a president’s time in power to two four-year mandates and guaranteeing the right to association. But she lamented that there were “very many worrying omissions and ambiguities.”
In some parts of the text, she said, “the protections in it are even weaker than the 1971 constitution it is supposed to replace.”
She pointed to the lack of “reference to the international human rights treaties which Egypt has ratified and is bound to uphold.”
Pillay also expressed concern that the new text maintained the 1971 charter’s stance that Islamic Sharia law should be the primary source of legislation and jurisprudence.
It also “does not explicitly prohibit discrimination on the grounds of gender, sex, religion and origin,” and is less inclusive in terms of religious freedom than the previous constitution.
She also regretted the fact that the president, according to the draft constitution, would directly appoint supreme constitutional court judges, “which risks giving the executive excessive power over the judiciary.”
