Egyptian vote favors charter

CAIRO - Voters overwhelmingly supported Egypt’s military-backed constitution in a two-day election, with 98.1 percent supporting it in the first vote since a coup toppled the country’s president, the Election Commission said Saturday.

Nearly 20 million voters backed the new constitution, almost double the number of those who voted for one drafted in 2012 under the government of toppled Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. Only a narrow sliver of voters - 1.9 percent - voted against the charter, after an extensive government-sponsored campaign supported it and the arrest of activists who campaigned against it.

The constitution, drafted by a panel dominated by secularists, is designed to replace a charter approved with a 33 percent turnout under Morsi and written by a mostly Islamist committee. Presidential and parliamentary elections will follow later this year.

The revised charter had been universally expected to pass; the level of turnout was the only open question, and both figures were in line with preliminary results reported last week.

“Despite a milieu of intense social upheaval and acts of terrorism and sabotage that sought to derail the process, Egyptians have now marked yet another defining moment in our road map to democracy,” presidential spokesman Ehab Badawy said. “The outcome represents nothing less than the dawning of a new Egypt.”

The expected overwhelming support for the charter is seen as key to legitimizing Egypt’s military-backed interim government and the political plan put in place since Morsi’s ouster in July.Analysts say it also suggests that military chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who led the coup against Morsi, has enough popular support to make a rumored run for the presidency himself.

It was the first vote since the military removed Morsi after protests in July. Hundreds celebrated in the streets after officials announced the results, including Hoda Hamza, a housewife who waved an Egyptian flag in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and carried a picture of el-Sissi with an inscription reading: “By the order of the people, el-Sissi is president.”

Hamza called the passage of the constitution a foregone conclusion.

Now, “I wish el-Sissi will be president,” Hamza said. “We have no better man. … If it weren’t for the army, we wouldn’t have food on the table.”

Morsi supporters, who boycotted the vote, immediately challenged the results. Despite being outlawed and labeled a terrorist group, Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and its allies continue to hold near-daily protests that often devolve into clashes with police.

“Even if 38 percent of the voters took part, that still means that 62 percent of the public rejects” the interim government, said Imam Youssef, a member of the Brotherhood’s coalition against the July coup and an ultraconservative Islamist party. “They are trying to legitimize their coup.”

Egypt’s High Election Commission said 38.6 percent of the country’s more than 53 million eligible voters took part in the two-day vote Tuesday and Wednesday. Judge Nabil Salib, who heads the commission, called the participation of 20.6 million voters an “unrivaled success” and “an unprecedented turnout.”

“What’s important in the constitution is not its meaning, but its credibility on the ground and what it guarantees in terms of the principles of justice and equality among all Egyptians,” Salib said.

In 2012, some 16.7 million voters cast ballots on the constitution drafted under Morsi, representing a 32.9 percent turnout amid a boycott by liberal and youth groups. In that election, 63.8 percent voted for the constitution.

The new constitution takes effect immediately.

A last-minute revision left the next steps up to the interim president, Adly Mansour, a senior judge who was named by el-Sissi. He is widely expected to call for presidential elections before parliamentary elections, reversing the order of the transition plan el-Sissi had initially laid out when he removed Morsi from office.

The new charter is not radically different from its predecessor. Legal experts say it does little to expand protections for fundamental rights or freedoms.

It removes a clause from the last constitution that had tried to guide the interpretation of Islamic law so that it conformed with the various schools of mainstream Sunni Muslim thought, but it leaves in a position of prominence, as the second article, a declaration that the principles of Islamic law are the bedrock of Egyptian jurisprudence.

Its most notable liberalizations are clauses mandating that the government spend a certain percentage of its budget on health care and education. Both have been woefully underfunded over the past three decades.

Activists and monitoring groups have raised concerns during this new election. U.S.-based Democracy International, which had some 80 observers in Egypt, said a heavy security deployment and the layout of some of the polling stations “could have jeopardized voters’ ability to cast a ballot in secret.”

“There is no evidence that such problems substantially affected the outcome of this referendum, but they could affect the integrity or the credibility of more closely contested electoral processes in the future,” the group said in a statement Friday.

Leading up to the vote, police arrested those campaigning for a “no” vote on the referendum, leaving little room for arguing against the constitution.

At least four people were killed and 15 wounded in clashes Friday between security forces and Islamists, the Health Ministry said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry raised similar concerns in a statement, calling on Egypt’s government to live up to its pledge to respect and expand rights while moving toward a civilian-led government through free and fair elections.

“Democracy is more than any one referendum or election,” Kerry said.

“It’s what comes next that will shape Egypt’s political, economic and social framework.”

Government officials and pro-military commentators have suggested that strong support for the referendum would be viewed as legitimizing what el-Sissi has done since July and as a signal that people want him to run for president.

The general has not explicitly said whether he’ll run.

“The link between the constitution and el-Sissi for president was symbolic,” said Abdullah el-Sinawi, a commentator close to the military. “I think it is hard for him to say he won’t run now and clash with a strong bloc [of 20 million] that calls for him to run. It would be like he’s letting them down.”

However, even Salib acknowledged that young voters stayed away from the polls. He justified it by saying the vote coincided with midterm exams for university students.

El-Sinawi called it a warning sign to authorities.

“This was a message that there is a crisis in reaching out to the new generation,” he said.

There has been an intense government crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi supporters since the coup, including the jailing of hundreds of its top leaders and the violent breakup of protests.

Meanwhile, terrorist attacks surged in the restive Sinai Peninsula and some assaults reached Cairo and Nile Delta cities. On Saturday night, military officials said soldiers in a firefight killed Ahmed el-Manaei, a leading militant of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which has claimed many of the recent attacks.

The government has blamed the Brotherhood for the violence. The Brotherhood, which renounced violence in the late 1970s, denies being behind the attacks.

The constitution was drafted by a 50-member panel dominated by secular figures and appointed by the interim president. It limits the scope of Islamic law in the country’s legislation, something Islamist groups enshrined in the 2012 constitution. It also ensures equality between women and men, and upholds the freedom of religion.

But with all its liberal clauses, the charter also gives the military the right to appoint its defense minister for the next eight years, and leaves its vast business holdings above oversight.

Information for this article was contributed by Mariam Rizk, Sarah El Deeb of The Associated Press; by Tarek El-Tablawy and Abdel Latif Wahba of Bloomberg News; and by David D. Kirkpatrick of The New York Times.