CAIRO (IPS) — Egyptians overwhelmingly endorsed a raft of
proposed constitutional changes in a nationwide referendum on Saturday. But
while the vote — the first since the Feb. 11 ouster of longstanding president
Hosni Mubarak — was hailed as the freest in recent Egyptian history, it also
served to polarize public opinion along broadly sectarian lines.

“The enthusiasm with which the people participated in
the referendum showed that the spirit of the January 25 Revolution is still
alive,” Egypt’s Coalition for Revolutionary Youth noted in a statement on
Monday. “But the vote was marked by a degree of polarization and religious
division, which threatens the national unity that had been a hallmark of the
revolution.”

An Egypt votes on a referendum on amendments to the country’s constiution.

The approved constitutional changes — which include the
amendment of eight articles of the national charter, the addition of two new
articles, and the abrogation of one article — aim to liberalize Egypt’s
electoral process following three decades of autocratic rule by the Mubarak
regime. Among other things, the amendments will ease conditions for launching
presidential candidacies, set a two-term limit on the office of the president,
and place all stages of the electoral process under judicial supervision.

The proposed amendments, unveiled on Feb. 25, were drawn up
by an eight-member committee of experts appointed by Egypt’s Supreme Council of
the Armed Forces (SCAF), which has run the nation’s affairs since Mubarak’s
ouster. According to the timetable set by the SCAF, parliamentary polls will be
held in June and presidential elections in August.

A newly-created constitutional article, meanwhile, mandates
that the incoming, democratically-elected parliament form a 100-member
committee to draw up a completely new national charter within six months of the
scheduled elections.

According to official results of the referendum announced
Sunday night, more than 14 million Egyptians — some 77 percent of those who
cast ballots — approved the proposed amendments. Roughly four million people,
meanwhile — about 23 percent of those who voted — rejected the changes.

The poll saw an unprecedented turnout of 41 percent of
Egypt’s roughly 45 million eligible voters — far higher than previous elections
and referendums. Turnout for last year’s parliamentary polls, for example,
which were marked by widespread reports of electoral fraud, was estimated at
less than 10 percent of the voting public — typical of most Mubarak-era
elections.

“I never saw a turnout like I did today,” said the
head of a judicial committee charged with supervising the balloting in a
district of Cairo, who had also overseen parliamentary elections in 2005 and
2010. “Despite the relatively small security presence in and around voting
stations, the public cooperated with procedures and followed instructions in a
very disciplined manner.”

“It was very impressive,” he told IPS, preferring
not to give his name. “In the wake of the revolution, the people seem to
be fully aware of the importance of their participation in the electoral
process.”

Mohamed Salem, a 55-year-old government employee who helped
supervise balloting at another Cairo polling station, was no less impressed.

“For the past 20 years I’ve assisted at polling
stations, but always did so with a troubled conscience,” Salem told IPS.
“But with this referendum I felt — for the very first time — that I was
doing something good for the country.”

But while the referendum was hailed as a democratic
milestone, it also led to a degree of sectarian polarisation unseen since the
January 25 uprising.

According to political observers, most of those who voted
against the amendments did so because they want an entirely new constitution
drawn up, while those who endorsed the changes did so to preserve Article 2 of
the current charter. Article 2 asserts that “Islam is the religion of the
state” and that Islamic law represents “the principal source of
legislation.”

“The majority of those who voted ‘yes’ were voting to
preserve Article 2,” Diaa Rashwan, senior political analyst at the
semi-official Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said on a
popular talk show after results were announced. “Those who cast ‘no’
votes, meanwhile, want a new political landscape, including a brand-new
constitution,” Rashwan asserted.

“We opposed the amendments because we want a new
constitution,” Bahy Eddin Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for
Human Rights Studies, told IPS. “This is because the current charter gives
the president absolute power and reduces parliament to mere window dressing —
no matter who holds the parliamentary majority.”

Hassan also criticized the SCAF-appointed committee that
drafted the amendments, which, he said, “didn’t allow for national debate
about the details of the proposed changes and didn’t provide enough time — less
than a month — to discuss and understand the complex issues involved.”

Like most of those who voted against the changes, Hassan
would also prefer to see elections delayed for at least one year so as to allow
new political parties to establish themselves and promote their respective
political platforms. As it currently stands, the Muslim Brotherhood represents
Egypt’s only political force with the organizational capacity to successfully
compete in national elections.

Hafez Abu Saeda, head of the Cairo-based Egyptian
Organization for Human Rights, believes religion played a “major
role” in the way most people voted in the referendum. “Those who
endorsed the amendments mostly represented the Islamist trend, while those who
voted against them were mostly Coptic Christians and secularists,” Abu
Saeda told IPS.

Abu Saeda’s assertion appears to be borne out by
conversations with voters who endorsed the changes. According to Islam Lutfi, a
33-year-old member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s youth wing who voted in favor of
the amendments, he and his colleagues did so “mostly to preserve Article
2.”

Lutfi told IPS: “After Christians mobilized against the proposed
changes to ‘stop the Muslims from taking over the country’ — and with churches bussing
Christians to polling centres en masse to cast ‘no’ votes — many Muslims who
had been reluctant to participate turned out in force to support the
amendments.”