The season of tampering with the constitution

In her landmark book “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” Canadian writer Naomi Klein dissected an authoritarian method of governance built on exploiting crises—real or manufactured—to impose new political and economic realities. The method echoes neoliberal theorist Milton Friedman’s view that major crises provide the means to achieve what politicians once deemed impossible.

What follows is a familiar pattern. A disaster is framed as a “golden opportunity.” Authorities—or their neoliberal allies—reach for ideas already prepared in advance but previously deemed too costly or controversial. These are repackaged with reformist language, while their true purpose remains concealed: sweeping privatization of education or healthcare, for example, sold as modernization and efficiency.

Egypt’s experience with this model long predates Klein’s critique. Under King Fuad I constitutional coups were staged in moments of political turbulence. The early years of the July Revolution brought the dissolution of parties, the suppression of Islamists and communists, and the creation of exceptional courts. Sadat sowed the seeds for the anti-socialist turn, Mubarak oversaw the steady erosion of social protection, privatization of the public sector, and the normalization of permanent emergency rule. Each episode relied on crisis as cover for radical change.

Confusion as a starting point

This method is always ready to be revived.

The element of crisis exists right now. Egypt’s political scene is in turmoil following the president’s seismic intervention, which cast a long shadow over what has become the most convoluted parliamentary election in the country’s history. The process is rife with decisions, annulments of the vote in certain constituencies, reruns ordered, appeals before the State Council and the Court of Cassation, and a war of words within the judiciary. All this alongside calls to cancel the entire election. These upheavals may soon shift the balance of power on the political street, especially given the poor performance of pro-government parties against independents.

The question, then, is unavoidable: are some actors exploiting the electoral crisis as a smokescreen to advance legal and constitutional changes prepared long in advance?

The answer is yes.

Amid the loud and legitimate demands for political reform, a revitalized public sphere, and an end to pre-scripted elections, a parallel discourse has emerged. It consists of imported ideas abruptly grafted onto the broader debate, amplified within specific circles, and strikingly similar to proposals that—until weeks ago—were confined to private conversations, too incoherent to survive public scrutiny.

Floating the idea of a unified judiciary 

The judiciary offers a clear example.

Following statements by the Judges Club and the Maritime Club of the Administrative Prosecution on judicial supervision of elections, videos circulated purporting to show members of the Administrative Prosecution and the State Lawsuits Authority criticizing the National Elections Authority. Soon after, it was announced that some members of both bodies had been stripped of their supervisory roles due to violations in the first phase. In this charged atmosphere, the idea of a “unified judiciary” began circulating—quietly at first, then openly—across social media and private groups.

According to high-level sources, proponents of this project—active well before the elections—are advocating the abolition of the State Council and the two prosecution authorities, folding them into the regular judiciary. The proposal includes unifying appointment and promotion through a single Supreme Judicial Council, imposing new requirements such as mandatory training at the Military Academy, and enacting all this through a constitutional amendment.

The pitch is familiar: equality among judicial bodies, streamlined appointments, reduced costs, and an end to institutional disputes. In reality, however, "judicial unification" strikes at the core of judicial independence. It transforms the judiciary into a bureaucratic extension of the executive, subject to centralized control and stripped of genuine autonomy.

It also squanders decades of accumulated specialization. Criminal, civil, and administrative justice are not interchangeable crafts. Merging them blurs essential distinctions between prosecution and adjudication, between legal advice and litigation on behalf of the state. Egypt’s legal system has preserved these separations for nearly eighty years for good reason.

A spark near the constitution

The constitution itself has not escaped this moment.

Critics of the electoral system have been drawn into a misleading debate about the supposed necessity of constitutional amendment. The claim—now widespread—is that the constitution imposed the winner-takes-all closed list and that any alternative would violate representation requirements for women, workers, farmers, youth, Christians, people with disabilities, and expatriates as stated in Articles 102, 243, and 244.

This claim collapses under the very plain text of Article 102, which permits individual systems, list systems, or any combination thereof—without prescribing proportionality or closure.

It also collapses under the experience of the 2011 parliamentary elections, which allocated one-third of seats to proportional closed lists at the governorate level while respecting inclusion requirements, without wasting votes. The Supreme Constitutional Court later dissolved that parliament not because of proportional representation, but because party candidates were allowed to contest seats reserved for independents.

The real issue, once again, is political will: whether to design a democratic electoral system using the flexibility already embedded in the constitution, and to redraw constituencies in a way that integrates protected groups without constitutional violation.

Serious proposals have existed for years. The most notable the preliminary document of Al-Shorouk newspaper’s Political Conference in 2014, which united the opposition in calling for a parliament divided into 40% individual seats, 40% proportional lists, and 20% winner-takes-all closed lists to meet the inclusion requirement.

For advocates of constitutional amendment, however, electoral reform is merely the doorway. The destination is far more dangerous. These may not be limited to presidential term limits or re-election, as some speculate, but potentially extend to the rights and freedoms clauses that Article 226 explicitly forbids amending, “unless the amendment brings more guarantees.” 

Behind the smokescreen

What followed the president’s statement was not random chaos. Social media was flooded with bizarre, unconstitutional proposals that hollowed out the very idea of a modern state: canceling elections altogether, postponing them indefinitely, dissolving post-2011 parties, transferring electoral supervision to the military, or concentrating legislative and oversight powers in the presidency.

These ideas did not spread organically. They appeared simultaneously across platforms, often wrapped in plausible concerns—combating vote-buying, abolishing closed lists—to lend credibility.

It was the familiar tactic of blending the reasonable with the absurd.

In his recent column in Al-Masry Al-Youm, former deputy prime minister Ziad Bahaa-Eldin accurately warned of this danger, writing that he “senses, behind talk of the failed election process, an ambush for the constitution, parliament, and the very idea of public participation,” expressing fear of “exploiting the moment to tamper with the constitution, erode its standing, and further corrupt public perceptions of parties and political life.”

This saturation of the public sphere with noise functions as a trial balloon. It exhausts citizens, blurs priorities, and clears the path for the quiet passage of pre-fabricated ideas. It is, almost textbook-perfectly, the mechanism Klein described.

The question that remains is not whether this strategy exists, but how it can be resisted.

There is no single answer. The only defense lies in restoring clarity—through collective effort that isolates the real sources of dysfunction, exposes manufactured distractions, and anticipates the next attempt to turn crisis into opportunity.