The problem in Egypt is that there is a giant ultimatum game going on, with the opposition threatening to deny the legitimacy of the constitution by walking out and convincing the SCC to invalidate the CA; well, it turns out that Morsi knows how to deploy a tit-for-tat strategy in the context of an ultimatum game, and people are surprised.  Hmm. 

When the Freedom and Justice Party nominated Muhammad Morsi for the Egyptian presidency, many Egyptian pundits dismissed him with the contemptuous title, “istibn,” or “the spare tire.”

Civil society groups in Egypt have released a letter addressed simultaneously to Hisham Qindil, Egypt’s prime minister, and Christina La Garde, executive director of the International Monetary Fund (the “IMF”), expressing their opposition to the proposed loan.  

The Egyptian Constitutional Assembly has finally completed a draft constitution for post-revolutionary Egypt, issuing it to the Egyptian public for their consideration almost a month ago.  (An English translation of the draft may be found here.)  As is the case with everything in post-revolutionary Egypt, the draft has proven to be extremely controversial, and has elicited widespread criticism, particularly from human rights organizations for its failure to meet international norms with respects to rights of women, children and freedom of religion.  Ellis Goldberg, meanwhile, has published a lengthy and very thoughtful analysis of the draft text in two parts on his blog, Nisr al-Nasr (Part I and Part II).

The Egyptian Constitutional Assembly has posted on its Facebook Page the draft language of the new constitution’s Citizens’ Rights Provisions.  I have reproduced the draft text below:

I read Wael Gamal regularly, and while I agree with some of his positions, I disagree with others.  With respect to his latest column, the cleverly titled “Dalil al-Mu`tarid `ala Hijaj al-Muqtarid,” I have penned in this post a short reply, with the equally cleverly titled “al-Radd al-Mu`tamad `ala Dalil al-Mu`tarid `ala Hijaj al-Muqtarid”.