Egypt votes on divisive referendum

Egyptians voted peacefully and in large numbers today in a referendum on an Islamist-backed draft constitution, hoping that the results would end three weeks of violence, division and distrust between the Islamists and their opponents over the ground rules of Egypt's promised democracy.

By midmorning, long queues had formed outside polling stations around the capital and the country. Military officers were on hand to ensure security. Despite a new outbreak of fighting over the charter in Alexandria the day before and opposition warnings of chaos, by late afternoon the streets of the capital were free of major protests for the first time in weeks.

The vote on a new constitution appeared to be yet another turning point for Egypt's nearly two-year-old revolution. After weeks of violence and threats of a boycott, the strong turnout and orderly balloting suggested a turn toward stability, if not the liberalism some revolutionaries had hoped for.

Regardless of the outcome of the vote, to be completed next Saturday, widespread participation provided the political process with a degree of credibility, pulling Egypt back from the brink of civil discord. It remained to be seen whether the losing side would accept the results, and many Egyptians may have cast ballots mainly out of a desire to end the bedlam of the political transition, but the election was expected to bolster the government's legitimacy and solidify the power of president Mohammed Mursi.

While they waited in line to cast their ballots, some Egyptians said their nation's new Islamist leaders had unfairly steamrollered the charter over the objections of other parties and the Coptic Christian Church, and that as a result the new charter failed to protect fundamental rights. Others blamed the Islamists' opponents for refusing to negotiate in an effort to undermine democracy because they could not win at the ballot box. Many expressed discontent with political leaders on both sides of the fight.

"Neither group can accept its opposition," said Ahmed Ibrahim (40) a government clerk waiting to vote in a middle-class neighborhood in the Nasr City area of Cairo. Whatever the outcome, he said, "one group in their hearts will feel wronged, and the other group will gloat over their victory, and so the wounds will remain."

The referendum on a new constitution once promised to be a day when Egyptians realized their visions of democracy, pluralism and national unity that defined the 18-day-revolt against then-president Hosni Mubarak. But then came nearly two

years of a chaotic political transition, in which Islamists, liberals, leftists, the military and the courts all jockeyed for power over an ever-shifting timetable.

The document that Egyptians voted on was a rushed revision of the old Mubarak charter, faulted by many international experts as a missed opportunity stuffed with broad statements about Egyptian identity but riddled with loopholes about the

protection of rights.

Worse still, for many, was the polarizing endgame battle that the charter provoked. Leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group allied with Mr Mursi, said more than 35 of its offices around the country, including its Cairo headquarters, had been attacked over the last three weeks. A night of street clashes between his Islamist supporters and their opponents killed at least 10.

Many voters waiting in line said they rejected the exploitation of the emotional issue of religion by both sides: the Islamists who sought to frame the debate over the constitution as a debate over Islamic law, and opponents who accused