Mixed Results for Mideast Democracy A constitution is supposed to be a set of governing principles around which citizens can unite and peacefully build a democratic state. Tunisia is providing a constructive path to this goal. Egypt is not. Sadly, Egypt is on the verge of enacting a Constitution that would effectively legitimize last year's coup and further enable the kind of authoritarian system that the 2011 revolution was intended to displace. Egypt's Constitution gives power and immunity to the military and is widely seen as an opening for the country's defense minister and top general, Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, to run for president. Tunisia's constituent assembly, meanwhile, is expected to approve soon one of the most liberal constitutions in the Arab world. Tunisia's prospects for a democratic outcome - after the ouster of the strongman, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011 - have always been better. With a population eight times smaller than Egypt and close ties to Europe, it has largely avoided political score-settling against its former elite and kept its military under civilian control. Tunisia, too, has had its dark days, including political assassinations, an economic crisis, threats from Islamists and deadlock over an elected, moderate-but-ineffective Islamic government. But last month, the government and the secular opposition reached an accommodation that provided for a caretaker prime minister and allowed work on the charter to proceed. The Islamists won wording in the Constitution stating that Islam is Tunisia's religion but gave up any reference to Islamic law. The more liberal parties secured guarantees that Tunisia would remain a civil state with separation of powers and freedoms and rights normally associated with a democracy. Egypt is a different story. Although thousands of Egyptians turned out for the constitutional referendum on Tuesday and Wednesday, the process was anything but free or fair. The vote came after the military, with popular backing, ousted Mohamed Morsi, the country's first freely elected president in July, then proceeded to carry out a series of crackdowns on protesters that killed more than 1,000 people and effectively seized control. The government has crushed the Muslim Brotherhood's party, arrested its leaders, seized its assets and criminalized membership. It shut down Egyptian news media sympathetic to the Brotherhood and arrested secular activists merely for trying to hang signs or stickers opposing the new charter. As in any democratic evolution, there are certain to be plenty of stumbles ahead in Tunisia. On Wednesday, for instance, hundreds of lawyers and judges demonstrated outside the constituent assembly building in Tunis to condemn the draft Constitution, which they say does not guarantee the independence of the judiciary. Still, the process, and the text of the charter so far, offers hope that Tunisians are figuring out a reasonable way to move forward. That is not the case in Egypt where many of the activists who risked their lives to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak in 2011 in favor of greater political freedoms have either given up or bought into the military's promise that only it can restore stability and move the country forward. General Sisi's election as president may well bring stability, but only at the cost of democracy.