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Egypt’s Opposition Urges Vote Against Draft Constitution
Egypt’s Opposition Urges Vote Against Draft Constitution
(about 11 hours later)
CAIRO — Egypt’s main opposition coalition urged followers on Wednesday to vote against an Islamist-backed draft constitution in a divisive referendum scheduled for Saturday and vowed to fight the charter even if it is approved.
CAIRO — Egyptians living abroad began casting ballots on Wednesday in a bitterly divisive referendum on an Islamist-backed draft constitution, the start of a vote that has become a test of the country’s nascent democracy.
“The National Salvation Front with the Egyptian people will continue to struggle to drop this draft of the constitution,” Hamdeen Sabahi, a leader of the coalition and a former left-nationalist presidential candidate told a news conference. “The referendum is not the end of our journey.”
After two weeks of often violent protests, the main opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front, announced that it would campaign for ‘no’ votes instead of a boycott, reversing earlier declarations that it would not lend legitimacy to the vote. At the same time, the coalition said it might issue a last-minute call for a boycott if several new conditions pertaining to the referendum, which it also announced Wednesday, were not met by Saturday morning.
At the same time, however, the coalition laid down conditions to its participation in the vote including full judicial supervision, independent and international monitors and adequate security. If those conditions are not met on Saturday morning, the group said, it would issue a last-minute call for a boycott.
Separately, a Cairo court delivered a motivating jolt to the opposition, which favors a more secular government, by sentencing an atheist from a Christian family to three years in prison for insulting religion. The verdict was a vivid reminder of opposition fears that the hastily drafted charter does not do enough to protect individual freedoms.
The statement followed a prolonged internal debate within the opposition over whether to boycott the referendum, an idea it had seemed to endorse on Sunday by dismissing anything that might legitimize the “supposed referendum.”
The opposition’s decision not to boycott the referendum followed weeks of fierce internal debates. While liberals questioned the Islamists’ commitment to protecting basic freedoms, many Islamists had questioned the opposition’s willingness to accept the results of democratic elections if those results went against their wishes. Investors saw the opposition’s participation as a sign of stability, and Egyptian stocks recovered almost 3 percent Wednesday after heavy losses during the previous week’s turmoil.
But its position on Wednesday — even as expatriate Egyptians began voting on the referendum at embassies abroad — signaled that the secular opposition groups are prepared to work within the parameters of Egypt’s new democracy rather than reject its results or question its legitimacy under adverse circumstances.
Opposition groups vowed to continue their campaign even if the new charter is approved, as expected. They are eyeing parliamentary elections set to begin in two months. “The National Salvation Front with the Egyptian people will continue to struggle to drop this draft of the constitution,” Hamdeen Sabahi, a leader of the coalition and a former left-nationalist presidential candidate, said at a news conference. “The referendum is not the end of our journey.”
Separately, the minister of defense canceled a planned gathering of social, political and government leaders that had been described as a display of national unity to repair the near-total rupture in the civic discourse that has taken place during the constitutional debate. The ministry said it was canceling the event because of inadequate participation.
The referendum had been scheduled to be held in Egypt on Saturday, but on Wednesday the election commission announced that some provinces would vote then, and the rest a week later, on Dec. 22. It was split into two phases in part because of a boycott by many of Egypt’s judges, whose supervision of the balloting is required by Egyptian law.
As the political maneuvering continued, Egyptian officials outside the country pressed ahead with the ballot among overseas voters potentially numbering hundreds of thousands.
It was unclear if the split voting would lead the opposition to issue a last-minute call for a boycott of the referendum since its conditions for the vote included that it take place on one day, and have full judicial supervision, independent and international monitors and adequate security.
While the number of expatriate Egyptian voters is small compared to its population of around 83 million, news reports said the ballot could yield hints about the balance of opinion toward the Islamist-based draft.
The man convicted of insulting religion, Alber Saber, is expected to be released on about $170 bail pending an appeal. An open and avowed atheist in a very traditional country where such views are usually admitted only in whispers, Mr. Saber, 27, was initially accused of circulating links to an online video lampooning the Prophet Muhammad that set off protests across the Muslim world in September.
According to the International Organization for Migration, around 2.7 million Egyptians live abroad, about 70 percent of them in Arab countries, where support for the draft is likely to be stronger, with the remaining 30 percent in Europe, Australia and North America, including Coptic migrants, thought to lean more toward the secular opposition.
Mr. Saber has denied promoting the video, and when prosecutors searched his computer, they found no evidence to support the charge, so he is being charged for other online statements critical of both Islam and Christianity.
According to the Web site of the Al Ahram state newspaper, quoting official figures, only around 300,000 expatriates voted in the most recent presidential runoff vote. The significance of the expatriate ballot thus may lie more in the fact that the authorities pressed ahead with it despite opposition at home.
Although blasphemy was a criminal offense under former President Hosni Mubarak before Egypt’s revolution, Mr. Saber’s case has raised special alarm because the country’s draft constitution elevates the crime of insulting religion to the charter level.
At the Egyptian Embassy in London, an official speaking in return for anonymity said there had been a slow start to voting on Wednesday among the several thousand Egyptian expatriates in Britain. The referendum in Egypt itself is set for Dec. 15 and 22.
“Expect to see many more blasphemy prosecutions in the future now that it’s embedded as a crime in the constitution,” said Heba Morayef, a researcher with Human Rights Watch who is tracking the case.
The political developments came against a backdrop of street protests by both supporters and foes of President Mohamed Morsi.
Such cases have proliferated in the nearly two years since Mr. Mubarak’s ouster, she said, because his government looked critically at Islamist lawyers who filed such complaints and discouraged prosecutors from pursuing them.
Just outside his office on Tuesday, thousands of his opponents staged a seventh night of demonstrations. Many of those against the proposed charter chanted for the downfall of Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president.
“The spike in prosecutions over the past year and a half was due to complaints being filed by Islamist lawyers on a decentralized basis, but the constitution does more than that, it makes it state policy,” Ms. Morayef said. “The tragic thing is that I think there is nothing anyone can do to stop this from growing in the future.”
Blocks away, crowds of Islamists denounced the secular opposition’s leaders as murderers for encouraging protests last week that led to deadly clashes with members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Separately, the defense minister, citing inadequate participation, indefinitely postponed a gathering of social, political and government leaders scheduled for Wednesday afternoon at a military facility. Military officials and a spokesman for President Mohamed Morsi had described the gathering as a display of national unity to repair the near-total rupture in civic discourse that has occurred during the constitutional debate. It was a chance, they said, to show that Egyptians were one “family.”
The huge crowds of rivals underscored the animosity and distrust that have all but shut down political dialogue here just as Egypt is poised to complete its promised transition to a constitutional democracy.
But the notion that the military was stepping into the debate — even if only as a host — reminded many Egyptians of the military’s control of the transitional government for the first year and a half after Mr. Mubarak’s ouster, and of the desire by some leading generals to maintain a political role behind the scenes of Egypt’s democracy.
Khaled al-Qazzaz, a spokesman for the president, said a “national dialogue” committee convened by Mr. Morsi was continuing to meet to try to come up with measures that might bridge the gap between the Islamists and their opponents over the proposed charter.
Mayy
El Sheikh contributed reporting.
Mr. Qazzaz said the panel was discussing measures that the president could announce now but that would take effect after the referendum. “If a segment of society has concerns about some articles of the constitution, how are we going to bring them together?” he said, declining to provide more detail.
Liberals complain that the charter does not do enough to prevent a future Islamist majority from limiting individual freedoms or women’s rights.
But the Islamists’ political strength may only partly account for the expected approval of the draft constitution in Saturday’s scheduled referendum. The charter also promises stability after two years of the country’s chaotic transition.
On Tuesday, the chief of the largest judicial professional association, Ahmed al-Zend, announced that 90 percent of its members would refuse to monitor the polls. Judicial supervision of elections is required by Egyptian tradition and law, but the judges said they would boycott to protest the charter and Mr. Morsi’s decree, since withdrawn, putting the president above judicial review.
Mr. Zend was a loyalist of former President Hosni Mubarak who is now more or less openly at war with Egypt’s new Islamist leaders. Some doubted that he spoke for all of his members, and advisers to Mr. Morsi insist that they have the cooperation of enough judges.
On Tuesday, Mr. Morsi’s government also put off until next month the signing of a badly needed $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund intended to help prevent an economic collapse. Officials said they wanted more time to discuss the related economic reform package with the public.
“The delay will have some economic impact, but we are discussing necessary measures” to address that until the loan can be finalized, Finance Minister Mumtaz al-Said told Reuters by telephone. “I am optimistic,” he added.
David D. Kirkpatrick and Kareem Fahim reported from Cairo, and Alan Cowell from London. Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting from Cairo.
