Jill Goldenziel analyzes Egypt's constitutional reforms:
While the amendments represent a positive start, these rushed, superficial constitutional revisions alone will not lead to substantive democratic change in a deeply flawed system. Organizing a vote in a country of 83 million is an overwhelming logistical task when previous elections were outright rigged by the Mubarak regime. Without appropriate time to prepare internal or external monitoring, the referendum process itself is fraught with opportunities for fraud. Moreover, the SCAF appears to be ramming the amendments through as a package with little opportunity for public debate or dissent on individual provisions. This does little to promote democratic discourse, and evokes tactics long used by authoritarian regimes to preserve power under democratic guises.