CAIRO // Nine out of 10 Egyptians who cast their ballots voted to approve the country’s rewritten constitution, state media reported yesterday, in a referendum seen as the first step towards restoring democracy.
Given a boycott by the Islamist opposition, the result has never been in doubt, but the interim government is hoping for a large turnout to bolster its democratic credentials after the overthrow of Mohammed Morsi.
Officials have said the army chief, Gen Abdel Fattah El Sisi, who removed Mr Morsi in July after massive protests calling for the Islamist president’s to stand down, will closely monitor turnout as he mulls going for the top job in an election scheduled for this year.
State media reported at least 90 per cent of those voting had supported the constitution, which the authorities say provides greater freedom of speech and protection of women’s rights.
“The people say ‘Yes,’” said a front-page headline in Al Akhbar, while Al Ahram reported that 90 per cent of voters had backed the charter.
An election official also said that unofficial results indicated that more than 90 per cent of the voters have said “yes” to the constitution.
After two days of voting that were marred by sporadic and deadly clashes between Mr Morsi’s Islamist supporters and police, polling ended at on Wednesday night.
Final results are expected late on Saturday.
The draft charter is a key piece of a political road map towards new elections for a president and a test of public opinion about the removal from power of Mr Morsi and his Islamist government.
It is a heavily amended version of a constitution written by Mr Morsi’s allies and ratified in December 2012 with 64 per cent of the vote but with a nationwide turnout of just more than 30 per cent.
Mr Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood group and other Islamist groups boycotted the referendum, calling it “illegitimate”.
The country’s second-largest Islamist group, the ultraconservative Salafis, have largely stayed away from the polls, apparently in response to a crackdown against Islamists that included confiscation of their assets, shutdown of their TV networks and the banning of their top clerics from preaching in mosques.
This left traditional Islamist strongholds seeing only a trickle of voters during the two-day balloting.
By contrast and raising the prospects of a continued polarisation among Egyptians, long lines formed outside polling stations in major urban areas and big cities, with crowds brandishing posters of the country’s military chief, chanting in support of the army.
Such patriotic outbursts followed an intense campaign by the government and the overwhelmingly pro-military media, which portrayed the balloting as key to the nation’s security and stability.
In the weeks before the vote, hundreds of thousands of flyers, posters, banners and billboards urged Egyptians to vote “yes” in the referendum. People were arrested for posters and campaigns calling for a “no” vote.
The current interim government is looking for a big “yes” majority and large turnout to win undisputed legitimacy and perhaps a popular mandate Gen El Sisi, to run for president later this year.
But silencing dissent has raised questions about the legitimacy of the process.
Gen El Sisi has yet to say whether he plans to seek the nation’s highest office, but his candidacy appears increasingly likely every day.
Kol Preap, the head of a Transparency International mission that monitored the referendum, said in a report on Thursday that while authorities had responded to “a deep desire by the majority of Egyptians to move toward a democratic path”, the political environment around the vote created “severe obstacles to advancing democracy”.
Amr Moussa, the head of the panel that drafted the charter, told the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al Awsat he believes Gen El Sisi is making up his mind to run in the race.
“I believe that Gen El Sisi is likely to run” for president, he said. “We need a nationalist figure trusted by the people, one who we are sure will not take the country into an abyss.”
Following the referendum, Egypt’s interim president, Adly Mansour, is expected to also announce a change in the army’s road map and schedule presidential elections before the vote for the next parliament. This could give Egypt a new president before the summer.
Many Egyptians saw the referendum as a final blow to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose parties have dominated the past five polls since the 2011 removal of longtime authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak.
* Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
