Voters in Egypt went to the ballot boxes Tuesday and Wednesday which is a true milestone for Egypt’s interim government installed by the military after last July’s ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. The vote was a referendum on a draft constitution. Official results are expected to be announced on Saturday but preliminary reports indicate a large majority who voted are in favor of the new constitution and have backed the draft charter according to a senior Egyptian official Thursday.
The official told The Associated Press that unofficial results, after most of the ballots have been counted, indicate that more than 90 percent of the voters have said “yes” to the constitution. He declined to give an estimate on the final turnout and spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.
In the meantime, a decree is expected within days which will set the date for presidential and parliamentary elections, Reuters reported, citing Al-Ahram. The draft constitution is also a key piece of a political road map toward new elections for a president and a test of public opinion about the coup that removed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood. It is a heavily amended version of a constitution written by Morsi’s Islamist allies and ratified in December 2012 with some 64 percent of the vote but with a nationwide turnout of just over 30 percent.
Morsi’s Brotherhood boycotted the referendum while the country’s second-largest Islamist group, the ultra conservative Salafis, also stayed away from the polls 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 across Egypt seeing only a trickle of voters during the two-day balloting.
By contrast, and raising the prospects of a continued polarization 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 and women ululating. 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.
The interim government is looking for a big “yes” majority and large turnout to win undisputed legitimacy and perhaps a popular mandate for the military chief, General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, to run for president later this year but silencing dissent has raised questions about the legitimacy of the process. El-Sissi is wildly popular among his supporters and appears the only serious candidate, Reuters reported but he has yet to say outright whether he plans to seek the nation’s highest office although his candidacy appears increasingly likely every day.
“I believe this is the most convenient time for Sisi to make an announcement if he has the intention to run,” Mohamed Qadri Said, a retired army general who works at the state’s Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic and Political Studies, told Reuters. “I do not see anyone else running against him. He has done great things to the country and the people like him.”
Many Egyptians saw the vote as a deadly blow to the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islam whose parties have dominated the past five polls since the 2011 ouster of longtime authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak. For the past three years, the Islamists swept the vote in parlamentary and presidential elections and seemed to have positioned themselves as the country’s rulers for decades. The privately owned “The Seventh Day” daily ran a mock, front-page death certificate for the Brotherhood, listing the cause of death as “political stupidity and betrayal.” The text also gave the location for the burial – – “ballot boxes.”
The Egyptian stock market has rallied to three-years highs this week which is driven by hopes for a more stable government.
