Egypt’s voters choose change

Partial preliminary figures show high turnout and favour eliminating restrictions on political rights and civil liberties Partial referendum results from a third of Egypt’s provinces yesterday showed a massive turnout and a vote overwhelmingly in favour of constitutional changes to eliminate restrictions on political rights and civil liberties . According to results issued by judges at polling centres, 11 out of 29 provinces showed between 65% and 90% of voters were in favour of the changes. Opponents feared the referendum’s passage would allow the Muslim Brotherhood to win out over Egypt’s dozens of new political parties in the forthcoming presidential and parliamentary vote. The partial preliminary results also showed 70% turnout at many polling centres, a massive showing after decades of political apathy in response to repression. Millions of Egyptians voted freely on Saturday for the first time in more than half a century, having waited for hours to cast their ballots on the package of constitutional changes. Young people traded mobile phone pictures of ink-stained fingers that proved they had voted. Others called relatives to boast of casting the first vote of their lives. In the well-off Cairo neighborhood of Maadi, a man hoisted his elderly father on his shoulder and carried him to a polling station. The first test of Egypt’s transition to democracy offered ominous hints of widening sectarian division, however. Many were drawn to the polls in a massive, last-minute effort by the Muslim Brotherhood after the widely despised National Democratic Party (NDP) of former president Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted last month in a national popular uprising. Critics say that would allow the Brotherhood and NDP to easily beat the dozens of political groups born out of the anti-Mubarak uprising, dividing power between former regime loyalists and supporters of a fundamentalist state – a nightmare scenario for both western powers and many inside Egypt. Among those most fearful of the Brotherhood’s rising power are Egypt’s estimated 8 million Coptic Christians, whose leaders rallied the faithful to vote against the changes. The NDP is blamed for corruption and fraud that marred every election during Mubarak’s 29-year rule, and its members have been accused of attempting to disrupt Egypt’s transition to democracy for fear of losing further power. The constitutional amendments were drawn up by a panel of military-appointed legal scholars and were intended to bring just enough change to the current constitution – which was adopted in 1971 and suspended by the military after it came to power – to ensure that forthcoming presidential and parliamentary elections are free and fair. In an interview with Egyptian newspaper El-Shorouk, a top member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces said that the council will issue ‘a constitutional declaration’ just after the announcement of the final vote to lay down next steps. He said that if the results were in favor of change, then a timetable will be set for parliament and presidential elections. If the majority voted against, the armed forces might remain in power for up to two years. Voters were asked to vote yes or no for the whole package of nine changes, which would also impose presidential term limits and curtail 30-year-old emergency laws that give police near-unlimited powers. Of the 10 provinces, 90% of voters in Fayoum were in favor of the constitutional changes, while 60% of el-Wadi el-Gedid voted against. On Saturday, reform campaigner Mohamed ElBaradei and a group of his supporters were pelted with rocks, bottles and cans outside a polling center at Cairo’s Mokattam district in an attack he blamed on followers of the old regime. The day was otherwise almost entirely peaceful. Hundreds of Egyptians formed lines outside polling centers before they opened. They snaked along the streets in Cairo and other cities, with men and women standing in separate lines as is customary in the conservative and mainly Muslim nation. Saturday’s vote was by far the most free since the military seized power in a 1952 coup, toppling the monarchy and ending decades of a multi-party system that functioned while Britain was Egypt’s colonial master. Only men with military backgrounds have ruled Egypt since. While Mubarak’s departure has left Egyptians euphoric about their newfound freedoms, many are also worried about the potential for social tensions and instability. Christian-Muslim clashes this month left at least 13 killed and more than 100 wounded in the worst sectarian clashes in years. On 1 January, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a church in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, killing at least 22 worshippers and wounding scores. A few days later, a policeman shot dead an elderly Christian man on a train. The Brotherhood, which has strongly campaigned for the adoption of the changes, advocates the installment of an Islamic government in Egypt. The ambivalence of its position on what role women and minority Christians play under their hoped-for Islamic government – such as whether they would be permitted to run for president or be judges – worry large segments of society. In the province of Luxor, thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters and Salafis, zealous adherents to practices from Islam’s early days, held separate demonstrations in the city center to campaign for votes in favour of reform. Churches handed out leaflets to worshippers calling on them to vote against reform. To the north in the province of Assiut, home to one of the country’s largest Christian communities, priests organised buses to ferry worshippers from churches to polling centers to cast their no votes. Islamists using loudspeakers in pick-up trucks roaming Assiut’s streets were calling on voters to vote in favour of reform. The attack on ElBaradei, the former head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency, forced him to flee without casting his ballot. The crowd smashed his car windows and shouted: “You traitor– we don’t want you”. ElBaradei supporters at the scene retaliated by chanting: “We want you”. The Nobel laureate later tweeted that “organised thugs” were to blame for the attack. In a second Twitter posting, he said Mubarak regime figures were seeking to undermine the revolution. More than half of Egypt’s 80 million people are eligible to vote. Egypt Middle East Muslim Brotherhood guardian.co.uk

Posted by on March 20, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.