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constitutional changes that will allow Egypt’s military rulers to move swiftly to elections, a judicial source said yesterday.
A parliamentary vote, if the referendum result is confirmed, could now take place as early as September.
“The preliminary indication of the result a few hours before the official announcement is that turn out nears 60 percent and 70 percent voted ‘yes’, 4 percent were invalid votes and 26 percent said ‘no’,” a judiciary source told Reuters.
The Muslim Brotherhood and remnants of former President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling party called for a ‘yes’ vote, and analysts said they would benefit most from an early parliamentary election. Reformers urged a ‘no’ vote saying they wanted the constitution re-written.
Votes had been counted in a referendum on proposed constitutional changes that will determine how quickly Egypt can hold elections after Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow, the judicial oversight body said yesterday.
The amendments were approved by a majority of voters in five of Egypt’s 29 governorates, a state television channel reported. The final result was expected later yesterday.
Millions of Egyptians flocked to the polls on Saturday to vote in the country’s first ballot in living memory whose outcome was not a foregone conclusion.
Approval of the amendments will allow Egypt’s military rulers to move along the path they have charted towards parliamentary and presidential elections that will allow them to hand power back to a civilian, elected government.
The military has said a parliamentary election could happen as early as September, with a presidential election after that.
Rejection of the amendments would force a change in plan that will possibly delay the elections.
The reforms were backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, a well-organised Islamist group, and remnants of deposed President Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party, which had called on voters to support the changes.
Secular reform groups and prominent advocates of change including presidential candidates Mohamed ElBaradei and Amr Moussa had rejected the amendments, arguing that Egypt needs an entirely new constitution.
An early election is seen favouring the Brotherhood and remnants of the Mubarak administration.
Decades of oppression under Mubarak crushed other groups, which are arguing for a longer interim period to allow political life to recover.
“All the polling stations in Cairo and the governorates . . . have finished the voting and the counting process and all documents and results have been delivered,” Moha-mmed Ahmed Attiyah, the head of the supreme judicial committee supervising the voting, said in a statement. – Reuters.