Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times
Egyptian women walk into a polling station. Millions went to the polls to pass judgment on an Islamist-backed constitution, whose passage would represent an important milestone in Egypt’s chaotic two-year transition to democracy. More Photos »
CAIRO — An Islamist-backed constitution appeared headed for approval on Saturday as deeply divided political factions prepared for a new stage in the battle over Egypt’s future.
Millions went to the polls to pass judgment on the charter, whose passage would represent an important milestone in Egypt’s chaotic two-year transition to democracy. But the hastily drafted document leaves unresolved many questions about the character of Egyptian democracy, including the Islamists’ commitment to individual freedoms and the willingness of the opposition to accept the political process without recourse to violence in the streets.
How the new constitution is implemented will determine whether Egypt returns to stability or plunges further into discord, and much of the region is watching the outcome of that definitive Arab Spring revolt.
Neither supporters nor opponents of the charter said they expected an immediate end to the partisan feuding that has torn at the country in the month before the vote. The Islamists allied with President Mohamed Morsi said they intended to rebuild trust by using the new charter as a tool to battle remnants of former President Hosni Mubarak’s government. The Islamists assert that Mubarak loyalists are obstructing change from within the bureaucracy and conspiring with the opposition to stir up unrest.
Leaders of the anti-Islamist opposition, however, said they hoped to carry the momentum of their struggle against the constitution into parliamentary elections set to be held two months from now. They accused the Islamists of using the specter of a struggle against Mubarak remnants as a pretext to take over the machinery of the state.
“If we accept the legitimacy of working within the system, they have to agree that the opposition is legitimate,” said Amr Moussa, a former foreign minister under Mr. Mubarak and presidential candidate who has re-emerged as an opposition leader during the constitutional debate. “The ancien regime is finished. They are imagining things. They are imagining that if you say no to the constitution, as I have done, then you are part of a conspiracy to topple them.”
Both sides of the ideological divide appeared to dig in.
“A crack has emerged in Egypt; there’s a gap, there’s blood and deaths, there’s extremism,” said Ahmed Maher, who helped jump-start the revolution as a leader of the secular April 6 Youth Group and then served as a delegate in the constituent assembly. “Something has happened between Egyptians that would make the results bad no matter what the outcome” of the constitutional vote, he said, predicting further clashes before the parliamentary elections.
Both sides said they expected the draft win affirmation on Saturday. It has already won approval in the less-Islamist districts that voted last weekend in the first round of the referendum. But opponents said low turnout and a narrow margin last weekend had undermined the charter’s credibility.
The level of turnout was hard to assess, in part because a shortage of polling supervisors may have reduced the number of stations and increased the length of the lines. Many of the judges required to supervise the voting boycotted in protest of what they called government intrusions on judicial independence.
Early indications, however, suggested turnout was meager. At one polling place in the dense Mohandiseen district near Cairo, the station was empty in the middle of the day.
Adding to the uncertainty about what may come next, the state news media announced in the late afternoon that Mr. Morsi’s vice president, Mahmoud Mekki, a former judge, had resigned. The draft constitution would eliminate his position in any case. In a statement Mr. Mekki said that he had submitted his resignation in early November but that a series of crises postponed it.
“The nature of political work does not suit my nature as a judge,” he said.
Morsi advisers defended the first round’s turnout. Although less than a third of eligible voters went to the polls, the advisers noted that the turnout of about 31 percent was not far off the 35 percent turnout in the same 10 provinces during the 2011 referendum after Mr. Mubarak’s ouster. In that case, turnout in other provinces pushed up total turnout to about 41 percent.
Mr. Morsi’s advisers said that after the ballots were counted in coming days he would deliver a televised address calling for unity and reconciliation.
Egyptian Vote on Constitution Sets Up New Stage of Factions’ Struggle http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/12/23/world/middleeast/23egypt/23egypt-articleLarge.jpg
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