Clashes Mar Vote on Egypt's Proposed Constitution; 11 Killed

[Comrade Grumpy]

Source: Los Angeles Times

<snip>

At least 11 people were reported killed nationwide Tuesday in clashes between supporters of Egypt's ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, and security forces. The bloodshed was in keeping with a grim pattern of political violence that has plagued the country for nearly three years since the 2011 fall of autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak.

The referendum, the first balloting since Morsi's overthrow six months ago, was widely viewed as a verdict not only on the proposed constitution, but on whether the army was correct to remove the Islamist president from power after enormous protests demanding his ouster. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood called for a boycott of the referendum. Perhaps as a result, an overwhelming majority of those turning out at voting precincts in Cairo were over-the-top fans of the general and of the proposed charter.

<snip>

The proposed constitution enhances the already considerable powers of Egypt’s military. But it also rolls back Islamist provisions ushered in under Morsi and decrees rights, including gender equality.

<snip>

Rights groups, however, have pointedly questioned whether provisions of the charter would be enforced, especially in light of the authoritarian stance taken by the interim government. More than 1,000 supporters of Morsi were killed in a mid-August crackdown on sit-in camps in the capital and elsewhere, and thousands of followers of the former president are in jail.


Read more: http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-egypt-constitutional-referendum-violence-20140114,0,1357589.story

[Igel]

1. The boycott is an interesting wrinkle.

Utterly foolish.

When the secularists boycotted the assembly, the judicial opinion was that this improperly biased the results--and therefore the work of the assembly could not be done properly. Boycott = invalidate results.

This time the opinion, I'm sure, will go the other way. Boycott confirms the results.


Meh. One survey done as part of some psych research asked a question: If you're sued and lose, should the person who sued you pay your legal fees? Something like 88% said "yes." Another batch of subjects got the flipped question: "If you sue somebody and lose, should you pay the person's legal fees?" Only something like 43% said "yes."

In other words, "What's fair is what benefits me" was the case for over 40% of the subjects if you rig the survey so that it's not obviously the issue of fairness that's being addressed. (Make it blatant: Put the questions on the same survey and you find that the percentage of "what's fair is what benefits me" drops to something like 5-6%. Which is still depressingly high for research done among people where evenhandedness is considered a moral value by most people. Now, put it in a society which is blatantly "I'm in it for me and my group" and I wonder what the results would be?)