Cairo
Amid signs of widespread fraud, the Egyptian government said this week that voters had approved its proposed constitutional amendments. Despite an opposition call for a boycott, the government said that at least 25 percent of the voting public—the minimum necessary—turned out for the referendum on provisions that grant President Hosni Mubarak sweeping new powers to suspend civil protections, weaken oversight of elections, and ban religious political parties. Human-rights groups and foreign election monitors, though, put the turnout at no more than 5 percent, and some voters were identified by journalists as government workers who had been bussed to polling places. One opposition newspaper carried the headline: “Even monkeys in the zoo know the referendum is forged.”
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