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Egyptians vote overwhelmingly in favor of new constitution in referendum
An overwhelming majority of Egyptians who voted on the country’s new constitution have backed the draft charter, a senior Egyptian official said Thursday.
The official told reporters that unofficial results, after most of ballots have been counted, indicate that more than 90 percent of the voters have said “yes” to the constitution.
He declined to give an estimate on the final turnout and spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the media.
The vote held Tuesday and Wednesday is a milestone for Egypt’s interim government, installed by the military after the ouster last July of Islamist president Mohammed Mursi.
The draft is also a key piece of a political roadmap toward new elections for a president and a test of public opinion about the coup that removed Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood. It is a heavily amended version of a constitution written by Mursi’s Islamist allies and ratified in December 2012 with some 64 percent of the vote but with a nationwide turnout of just over 30 percent.
Mursi’s Brotherhood boycotted the referendum while the country’s second-largest Islamist group, the ultraconservative Salafis, also stayed away from the polls.
This left traditional Islamist strongholds across Egypt seeing only a trickle of voters during the 2 day balloting.
