Two separate groups active in this year’s revolution have launched campaigns to educate the public about the upcoming drafting of the Egyptian constitution. The April 6 Youth Movement-Ahmed Maher’s Front announced plans Monday to launch a campaign on the constitution by the beginning of the new year. Meanwhile, the “Pay Attention” Facebook page launched a similar campaign entitled “The Constitution is Yours.”
Hamdy Youssef, a member of the April 6 group’s executive bureau in Alexandria, said the campaign aims to raise awareness about the upcoming drafting of the nation’s constitution. It will also consider people’s demands about the constitution and submit them as proposals to the assembly that will supervise the drafting.
The campaign will include two parts. The first part, entitled “What is a Constitution?,” will inform citizens about the nature of different constitutions in countries around the world. The second part, called “Write Your Own Constitution,” will address which terms citizens want to be included in their country’s own constitution.
“We paid attention to this campaign because writing the constitution is a dangerous issue,” Youssef explained. “It’s not like parliamentary elections.”
He hopes that such awareness campaigns can minimize the undue influence exercised by certain parties during the drafting process.
In related news, the “Pay Attention” Facebook page launched a campaign to inform citizens about the importance of the next constitution and to urge their participation in shaping its contents. Islam al-Hadary, the campaign’s general coordinator, compared the initiative to others launched in Egypt and in foreign countries. “The campaign is similar to the human rights document by Mohamed ElBaradei and an initiative by Islamists in an attempt to write the supra-constitutional principles,” he told Al-Masry Al-Youm.
The campaign, which will last through the month of January, will depend on volunteers, parliamentary members and legal experts who will ultimately submit proposals to the assembly in charge of writing the constitution.
Translated from Al-Masry Al-Youm
