By Omnia Talal and Rania Ahmed
CAIRO, Jan 7 (Aswat Masriya) Several Egyptian activists have expressed concern with campaigns guiding women to vote “yes” in an upcoming constitutional referendum, considering it an illegal manipulation of the voters’ choice to serve a specific group’s interest.
The National Council for Women, headed by Mervat al-Talawy, has been organizing seminars and activities across the country to convince women to vote for the constitution. Talawy was a member of the assembly that wrote this new constitution.
Twenty articles of the new constitution serve women’s interests, Talawy said, encouraging everybody to support the roadmap that was announced by the army in July upon President Mohamed Mursi’s ouster.
Egypt’s army deposed Mursi in July in response to mass demonstrations, suspended a constitution written by his aides and called for early parliamentary and presidential elections.
A 50-member assembly was then formed to write a new constitution to replace the one written by the Islamist-led assembly under Mursi.
Egyptians will vote on this new constitution on January 14 and 15.
The article stipulating the status of women in the constitution says, "The state commits to achieving equality between women and men in all civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution."
Like the National Council for Women, the Egyptian Feminist Union, headed by Hoda Badran and others have organized campaigns to urge Egyptian women to vote for this new constitution.
“Throughout Egypt’s modern history, different political forces used women to vote for them. This has happened before during the rule of toppled Autocratic Hosni Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood. It is now repeated for the interest of certain parties,” said Afaf Marei, the coordinator of Egypt’s CEDAW coalition.
Marei added that organizations that urge women to vote for the constitution should rather encourage them to use their rights in the decision-making process without directing their opinions.
She suggested that the main reason behind campaigns that urge women to vote "yes" is the widespread poverty and ignorance, “which makes it easy to influence their choice.”
Dalia Abdel Hameed from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights told Aswat Masriya that she has received a letter from the council asking her to join efforts and urge for a “yes” vote.
Abdel Hameed said that this is not the council’s job, explaining that it should instead be focusing its efforts on improving the conditions of women, monitoring the government’s performance and making suggestions and introducing proposals of reform projects, etc.
She accused the council of losing its independency and representing the government’s interest.
According to the council, the number of eligible female voters is estimated at 23 million.