Egyptian Media Urge Voters To Back Constitution

In Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square, a new billboard has gone up, calling on Egyptians to take part in the upcoming constitutional referendum.

And although it does not explicitly encourage bystanders to vote yes to the amended charter, the wording of the advert hints at the idea.

“Taking part in the [constitutional referendum] means yes to 30 June and 25 January,” the billboard reads, referring to the popular revolts that ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July and before him longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak in January 2011.

The billboards can be seen throughout the capital, as Egyptians prepare to go to the polls on 14-15 January to vote on the amended constitution.

The sponsors of the campign are unknown. The spokesman for the 50-member committee which amended the 2012 Islamist-backed constitution, Mohamed Salmawy, told Ahram Online the panel was not responsible for it. A government spokesman said a group of businessmen and civil society organisations funded the ad campaign “out of a sense of national duty,” but would not reveal further details.

The amended constitution is a critical part of the roadmap put in place by the interim authorities following Morsi’s ouster in July. Controversy over the 2012 constitution, drafted during Morsi’s presidency, was a major rallying cry for the president’s opponents, and the charter was suspended on the same day that he was removed from power.

On public and private TV channels, a state-sponsored video clip that is being aired regularly in the run-up to the referendum echoes the implicit ‘vote yes’ message of the billboards.

“You have to know the significance and the importance of the upcoming constitution,” reads the text of the clip. “The referendum is a message to the world … your participation means this,” it continues, before aerial images of the mass anti-Morsi protests on 30 June appear on the screen.

In another video broadcast on state TV, members of the drafting committee explain why voters should vote yes in the referendum.

Many journalists and TV anchors have also been calling on their viewers to vote yes in the referendum, or encouraging them to do so in indirect ways.

The situation is a dramatic reversal of the build-up to the adoption of the previous constitution in 2012, when many private media outlets criticised the draft, and urged the public to vote no.

“At that time, the media was no longer accepting of Morsi and the Brotherhood,” Naila Hamdi, professor of journalism and mass communication at the American University in Cairo (AUC), told Ahram Online. “There was an outright war between the media and the Brotherhood.”

State media, however, had campaigned for the yes vote, described as a vote for stability. Billboards inviting citizens to vote yes were also common in the capital in the run up to the vote in 2012, while private Islamist-oriented TV channels openly encouraged their viewers to approve the constitution, which had been drafted by an Islamist-dominated assembly.

This time around, it is non-Islamist private channels that support the campaign, along with state media outlets.

Privately-owned Al-Kahera Wal-Nass channel displays a banner in the left corner of the screen reading “yes to the constitution.”

“We will say yes; we will say yes twice,” well-known journalist Ibrahim Eissa said on Saturday during an episode of his show on ONTV. “Because it is a referendum on the future of Egypt, on the 30 June, on the end of the (Brotherhood), on the defiance of the Americans,” he said, referring to what has been perceived by many Egyptian commentators as a lack of US support for the ouster of Morsi.

His colleague Amany El-Khayat, who presents a morning show on the same channel, welcomed the constitution the day after it was completed. “This constitution will be a constitution … that will make us proud in front of other nations,” she said on 2 December. “Let me tell you, tell myself, and tell the entire crew of the show, congratulations to us for the constitution.”

According to Rasha Allam, an assistant professor at the journalism and mass communication department of the AUC, even TV anchors who are not openly calling on their audience to vote yes are conveying a similar message.

“Even if they are stating the flaws of the constitution, [their stance] is clear from the people they are interviewing, who are either members of the 50-member committee or people supporting the constitution,” Allam told Ahram Online. “They are speaking of the roadmap, of the country’s stability, of the good articles of the constitution,” she added.

Allam also said that media appeared to be taking the side of the yes vote by convincing people that even if the 2013 draft constitution may be flawed, it could still be changed by an elected parliament.

Lamis El-Hadidi, a well-known TV anchor, has taken this approach during her show Hona El-Assema on privately-owned CBC channel. “This is not a divine document, and by the way, this document can be amended … we need to think with more logic, see the positive aspects of the document. If you are fine with 80 percent of the constitution, or even 60 percent, then you have to go and vote yes,” El-Hadidi said on 3 December.

A few days later, she vehemently criticised Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh, a moderate Islamist and a former Muslim Brotherhood member, after he announced that his party Strong Egypt was going to vote no.

Strong Egypt, which supported Morsi’s ouster, said it will vote against the constitution because the current draft does not fulfill the goals of the 25 January revolution and makes the military a “state above the state.”

El-Hadidi, however, accused Abul-Fotouh of being against the military.

“It is the right of Abul-Fotouh, of course, it is the right of any political party, any citizen, to vote no … we are not opposing the ‘no’, we want to analyse why Abul-Fotouh and his party are saying no to the constitution,” she said.

“It is clear that Abul-Fotouh has a problem with the army,” she concluded.

The 2012 constitution was passed by 64 percent of voters in December last year. The turnout nationwide was 33 percent. Interim authorities seem to be pushing to exceed these numbers in the upcoming poll in a bid to cement their legitimacy. Journalists who have been vocal supporters of the country’s new leadership have stressed the importance of exceeding these figures at the upcoming poll in order to cement the legitimacy of Egypt’s current political order.

“I want a great outcome rate, an unprecedented one…You were 30 million on 30 June, and even more on 26 July [when armed forces chief General El-Sisi called for demonstrations to support the military’s legitimacy]. Go down. Prove that you are the majority, that you are still following the path and that you’re not backtracking,” Youssef El-Hosseini of ONTV said on air on 9 December.

“Go down and prove you are still fighting terrorism, that you love this country and want to develop it; that you are Egyptian.”

Hamdi argues that Egyptian media outlets are often too politically involved. “They should step back and be more objective,” she said. “If they want to play this important role of raising awareness among the people about the constitutional process, they should do so without telling them which way they should vote.”

Source : Ahram