|
Cairo:
Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi received a copy of the country's
draft constitution Saturday night and announced plans for a
December 15 public referendum on the draft. Supporters of Mursi
have welcomed his call for the referendum.
A large rally of Islamist supporters at Cairo University cheered
the announcement late on Saturday.
Opposition figures, however, vowed to
fight on against the draft document, which they say undermines
basic freedoms.
Egypt's highest court is expected to rule later on
Sunday on the legitimacy of the assembly that agreed the draft.
Mursi called for the vote in a
speech before members of the constituent assembly, the 100-member
panel that drafted the document.
Mursi praised their work, describing it as
another step toward "fulfilling the goals" of the revolution that
toppled longtime president Hosni Mubarak last year.
Hossam el-Gheryani,
the head of the assembly, also spoke.
"We added freedoms in the
draft that did not exist before," he said. Mursi thanked the
nearly two dozen members of the assembly who quit in recent weeks.
"Their work can't be ignored," he said.
But many feel it has been: Liberals and representatives of the
Coptic Church withdrew from deliberations and accused the panel of
pushing an Islamist agenda.
His speech follows major protests in
Cairo on Saturday, both for and against his presidency.
The Muslim
Brotherhood organized a major rally outside Cairo University,
where protesters carried Egyptian and Saudi flags and posters of Mursi, with banners reading "Together (with Mursi) to save the
revolution."
Witnesses said hundreds of demonstrators were bussed
in from outlying governorates in the Nile Delta region. And a
number of Muslim clerics in Friday sermons in the southern city of Assiut called the president's opponents "enemies of God and
Islam".
Saturday's demonstrations come a day after protests against the
draft turned violent in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.
The
demonstrators chanted "freedom, down with the constitutional
establishment", as riot police charged along the city's streets
and crowds of protesters surrounded police vehicles.
The protests
were sparked by the president's decrees a week ago granting
himself wide-ranging power to issue decrees which would not be
subject to judicial review.
In an interview with state television aired on Thursday night,
Mursi said it was necessary to speed up passage of the
constitution in order to end Egypt's transitional period.
He also
promised that his new found legislative powers would end after the
referendum.
The elected parliament was dissolved by court order
earlier this year; new parliamentary elections will be held once
the constitution is approved.
"This constitutional declaration is
temporary, and it will end once the people have approved the
constitution," Mursi said.
|
Comments
|
Quick links