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Egyptians Vote on New Constitution in Referendum | |
(about 7 hours later) | |
CAIRO — Egyptians trundled to the polls on Tuesday for the third referendum in three years to approve a new constitution, this time to validate the military ouster of their first fairly elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. | |
The level of turnout will be the most closely watched measure of success for the plebiscite, widely viewed as the launch of the presidential campaign by the military leader who removed Mr. Morsi, General Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi. | |
Almost everyone expects those who do vote to support the charter in a landslide, and at several polling places Tuesday many voters expected a nearly unanimous result. | |
“What? Everybody is voting yes to the constitution!,” one man leaving a polling place exclaimed when he mistakenly thought he had overheard another voter say he had cast his ballot against it. “No, I meant I voted against the last one!,” that voter, Sami Hadid, 73, clarified, referring to the constitution drafted by an Islamist-led assembly and approved in the previous referendum a little more than one year ago. | |
The debate over the charter has been one-sided, to say the least. The Brotherhood, the Islamist group that had dominated Egypt’s free elections and now constitutes the main opposition, is boycotting the vote as an attempt to legitimate an illegal coup. The government has declared the Brotherhood a terrorist organization, jailed its leaders, seized its assets, and criminalized membership. It has shut down all the sympathetic Egyptian media outlets and arrested activists for even attempting to hang signs or stickers opposing the new charter. | |
At least seven members of Strong Egypt, a moderate Islamist party, have been arrested for attempting to hang posters against the charter, moving the party to boycott the vote rather than face more arrests. Another two women were arrested Tuesday for attempting to put up opposition signs as well, state media reported. | |
By Tuesday afternoon, a small bomb had gone off near a court building in the Imbaba neighborhood of Giza, damaging a court building but injuring no one. The interior ministry officials had reported that at least five civilians were killed, at least eleven injured, and dozens arrested in clashes between security forces and what they said were Brotherhood members attempting to disrupt the vote. | |
Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim had warned in a television interview last week that “any attempt to disrupt the referendum or to prevent citizens from voting will be confronted by a level of force and severity that has not been seen before.” In official statements, the Brotherhood has told its members to stay away from polling places to avoid police violence. | |
On the other side, state-run and private television networks--- controlled by a small elite hostile to the Islamists-- signs hymns to the constitution with a single voice. And Tuesday the streets were crowded with banners urging, “come down and vote,” “you will be judged on your vote,” or, “"Vote yes to the constitution and no to terrorism,” | |
“The state is proposing this charter with the logic of: 'you are either with me or with terrorism,’" said Ahmed Ragheb, of the National Community for Human Rights. | |
Some said the silencing of public dissent exceeded even the ritualistic plebiscites that punctuated the 30 year rule of former President Hosni Mubarak. | |
“This time it has surpassed Mubarak at the height of his authoritarianism,” said Hossam Bahgat, the founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. | |
For virtually the first time since the 1989 one-candidate referendum granting Mr. Mubarak a fourth term, Mr. Bahgat said he planned to sit out the vote. “Like most Egyptians, I guess that I am indifferent,” he said. | |
The lines at polling places around Cairo seemed far smaller Tuesday than they did during the previous constitutional referendum, in December 2012, and reports from around the country suggested smaller crowds as well. But the vote will take place over two days, voters have often waited until they get off work, and the ultimate turnout was impossible to forecast. (Egyptian state radio reported long lines and big crowds everywhere.) | |
About a third of the electorate turned out to vote on the last charter, which passed by a margin of about two to one but was rejected by a majority in Cairo. The referendum had followed a noisy debate in which anti-Islamist politicians, judges, diplomats, and most of the privately owned media attacked it for opening a door to the future religious restrictions on individual liberties. | |
The new charter retains the main clause stipulating that the principles of Islamic law are the wellspring of Egyptian jurisprudence. It removes a more controversial clause that sought to constrain the way judges interpreted those principles, defining them according to the broad body outlines of mainstream Sunni Muslim scholarship. But the ultraconservative Islamist party Al Nour is still supporting the charter, accepting its fidelity to Islamic law. | |
The biggest revisions, though, increase the power and autonomy of the military, the police and the judiciary—the three branches of the old Egyptian bureaucracy that played in biggest role in Mr. Morsi’s overthrow. | |
For those who did vote Tuesday, the referendum had the feeling of a martial pageant soldiers and police surrounded every polling place, and in some places voters leaving the polls paused to get their pictures taken with officers. | |
“It is all for the love of our country and the love of Sisi!,” crowed Nadia Sayed, 64, sitting with a group of female friends across the street from a polling place in the Nasr City neighborhood after voting. “He will do everything good for our grandchildren,” she said, before the women broke into ululation and song—"Bless the Hands,” a pop-song celebrating the army and police for removing Mr. Morsi. | |
Even in neighborhoods that had been considered Islamist strongholds—from the slums of Imbaba to middle class Nasr City--- it seemed impossible to find a voter who said he or she had voted against the charter, although soldiers and police tried to keep a close watch on journalists conducting interviews. | |
Almost everyone brought up the Brotherhood, volunteering that they voted for the new constitution mainly to be oppose the group, which won successive elections but failed to control the Egyptian bureaucracy, revive the economy or calm the streets. | |
“May God avenge us!,” one voter leaving the polling a polling place in Nasr City shouted to journalists. “They made us suffer for the last three years!” | |
Gamal Abdel Tawab, 55, a physician in Imbaba, said he voted for the new constitution “because I love my country, I love my army, and I hate the Muslim Brotherhood.” | |
Next, he said, he looked forward to voting for a new president: General Sisi. |