EGYPT:A thin trickle of Egyptians voted yesterday in a referendum on constitutional amendments that would help the government exclude opposition Islamists from the political system.
All major opposition groups, including the influential Muslim Brotherhood, have told supporters to boycott the referendum, saying they cannot be sure the voting will be fair.
The Hesham Mubarak Law Centre, an independent group co-ordinating a monitoring operation, said in three provinces for which it had figures, fewer than 1 per cent of people had voted by noon, four hours into the 11 hours of voting. "The turnout in all provinces where we are monitoring is still very, very low," spokesman Khaled Ali added.
The government says the referendum is part of a gradual reform programme to give parliament more power.
But the main thrust of the change is to give the authorities more power to prevent political activity by the Muslim Brotherhood, which won one-fifth of the seats in parliament in 2005 and could have won more if it had run more candidates.
Witnesses in Cairo, the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, and the Suez Canal city of Port Said said that most polling stations had no voters or at the most a handful.
Four volunteers working for the liberal opposition Ghad Party were detained outside a polling station in the Nile Delta province of Kafr el-Sheikh, the party and police sources said.
In Alexandria, some 300 activists, mostly members of the opposition movement Kefaya (Enough), protested with chants of "The amendments are invalid. [ President] Hosni Mubarak is invalid." Police watched from nearby but did not intervene.
Almost two hours into voting in a large school in Alexandria, officials said 53 out of 3,576 registered voters had voted - about 1.5 per cent. Few Egyptians bother to vote in referendums unless they receive some incentive but several voters said yesterday they would vote against the amendments out of principle.
Taghrid Sabra (39), an Alexandria housewife and university graduate, said: "I don't agree because this is against the people. I don't feel that it is freedom."
One Cairo voter who asked not to be named said he was ignoring the call for a boycott because he was worried his ballot paper might fall into the wrong hands.
The authorities usually add to the yes vote by bussing in civil servants and public-sector companies' employees on supervised voting trips. The brotherhood, the main challenger to the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), said Egypt faced a dark future if the changes won approval in the referendum.
Human rights groups in Egypt and abroad have criticised the amendments, which would perpetuate the government's broad powers to detain people in the name of combating terrorism.
The United States joined in the criticism last week, saying it was concerned and disappointed that Egypt was not taking the lead in the Middle East on greater openness and pluralism.
However US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, visiting Egypt on Sunday, tempered her criticism. - ( Reuters )