Word: egypts
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...critics contended, to ease the way for Mubarak's son Gamal to succeed to the presidency in 2011. Human rights groups were particularly outraged by the amendment to Article 179 giving the president broad police powers in the name of fighting terrorism. Critics said the change amounted to enshrining Egypt's State of Emergency, decreed when Mubarak took office in 1981 after the assassination of former President Anwar Sadat by Islamic extremists, into the constitution...
...Critics also seized on the change to Article 5 that effectively bars the legalization of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest and best organized opposition group and holder of 88 seats as independents in the current parliament. The contentious amending of Article 88 eliminates judicial supervision of elections and gives oversight authority to a new supreme elections council, thus ending what many Egyptians see as the only credible safeguard for free and fair voting...
...Gamal Mubarak, a senior official of the ruling National Democratic Party, who has repeatedly denied seeking the presidency, insisted that while the anti-terrorism amendment is necessary to fight the global threat, Egypt's police measures would be put under judicial supervision. He also argued that banning religious parties was an accepted Egyptian tradition and that the amendment to Article 88 "provides much more detail, much more guarantees" in running and supervising elections. "We are aware of the criticism and the skeptics out there," Gamal Mubarak told journalists on the eve of the referendum. "Democracy is an evolving process...
...father's unchallenged power was certainly evident across Egypt on referendum day. After casting a "yes" vote at the Fouad Galal school on the east bank of the Nile River in Cairo, Diab Abolibda, a 59-year-old engineer, described how in the presidential election two years ago he favored upstart candidate Ayman Nour over Mubarak. Asked how he felt now that runner-up Nour was serving a five-year prison term for election fraud, a verdict and sentence criticized by many democracy advocates as political punishment for brashly challenging the president's authority, Abolibda let out a hearty laugh...
...hundreds of black-clad security policemen and scores of plainclothes policemen. "I didn't vote," said Mohammed Fawzi, a 26-year-old lawyer, who spent the day observing the Kifaya demonstration instead. "Whether you voted 'yes' or 'no,' the outcome would be the same. The future in Egypt is bad." When asked to elaborate, Fawzi, nervously eyeing policemen who started to show an interest in the interview, said, "Sorry, I'm afraid to say anything more." So long as Egypt's citizens are too ambivalent to vote and too afraid to speak, Egyptian democracy will remain a work in progress...