Are Egypt’s current rulers making the same mistake as their Muslim Brotherhood predecessors of pushing through a constitution that will alienate their allies and agitate their opponents? A committee of ten judges and law professors have drafted a document that reflects the priorities of the deep state but offers far less to others.

There are already some signs that those who dare not criticize the military generals and police officers can fearlessly turn their guns on the new constitution. The new regime will almost surely survive the struggle, but the coalition that supported its seizure of power may begin to fray under the pressure.

On Sunday, the jurists finally delivered their “amendments” to the 2013 constitution to the president—a set of recommended changes so extensive that they amount to a new constitution. While they worked in secret, a week earlier an earlier version of their draft had leaked, setting off a cascade of criticisms from a variety of political actors, most of whom made the blind men of Hindustan seem farsighted.

From within the state, of course, certain actors were protected and left with little about which to complain. The military received its cherished exemption from civilian oversight, chiefly through a national defense council with a military majority, a requirement that the minister of defense be drawn from its ranks and subject to its approval, and a budget that is to be approved by the parliament as a lump sum. The security services were largely unaddressed and would likely find it easy to continue to operate outside of any legal channels, as they have for a couple generations. Indeed, since the police are to be headed (symbolically but portentously) by the president, they may be effectively immune from parliamentary oversight. Judges—anyone reading the proposed amendments is not likely to be able to forget that there was a judicial majority on the committee—received not only a substantial degree of autonomy but also the authority to veto judicial legislation they dislike. Existing unions were guaranteed continued monopoly in their sphere of representation.

But the less sensitive parts of the Egyptian state—what I have referred to elsewhere as the “wide state” as opposed to the “deep state,” many of which had lobbied furiously to gain recognition in the 2012 constitution, were frozen out of the drafting and found many of their favorite clauses on the cutting room floor.