CAIRO: Egypt’s opposition cried fraud in yesterday’s first round of a divisive referendum on a new constitution, accusing President Mohammed Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood of rigging votes to adopt the Islamist-backed text.
But the National Salvation Front opposition coalition did not immediately make good on a threat to call a boycott if it perceived violations, instead stepping up an appeal to Egypt’s 51 million voters to reject the draft charter.
The Front’s allegations, which included unsealed ballot envelopes and a judge preventing Christians from voting at one Cairo polling station, underlined the highly charged conditions in which the two-stage referendum was taking place.
Three weeks of anti-Mursi protests and clashes in Cairo last week that killed eight people and injured hundreds failed to prevent the referendum going ahead on the draft, largely shaped by Mursi’s Islamist allies.
To ensure security, some 120,000 troops were reinforcing 130,000 police.
Voting was being staggered across the country yesterday and a week later because many judges were not willing to oversee polling.
In Alexandria, Egypt’s second-biggest city, clashes between stone-throwing mobs erupted on the eve of voting, injuring 23 people, the official Mena news agency reported, after a cleric urged worshippers in his mosque to vote “yes” in the referendum.
The situation there was calm yesterday, Khaled Al Azazi, spokesman for the regional security authorities, said.
“We will arrest anyone who starts riots.”
Mursi cast his ballot at a polling station near the presidential palace in Cairo, state television showed. He made no comment to the media.
The Muslim Brotherhood has thrown its formidable organisational machine behind a campaign in favour of the draft constitution.
The proposed charter “offers rights and stability,” said one Cairo voter backing it, Kassem Abdallah.
AFP
