Protests in Cairo over constitution

basic freedoms.
Marches led by opposition figures set off from several Cairo districts to join the protesters in Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the uprising that overthrew president Hosni Mubarak in early 2011.

The Islamist-dominated assembly, tasked with drafting a new charter to replace the one suspended after Mubarak’s ouster, approved the draft early yesterday morning after an almost 24 hour-long session boycotted by liberals and Christians.

The panel’s head, Hossam el-Ghiriani, said a delegation from the Constituent Assembly would visit Mursi on Saturday to present him the draft constitution. Mursi is expected to call for a referendum within two weeks.

Rights activists say the charter undermines freedoms of women and religious minorities while the opposition says it was rushed through to force an early referendum.

The constitution has taken centre stage in the country’s worst political crisis since Mursi’s election in June, squaring largely Islamist forces against liberal opposition groups.

The crisis was sparked when Mursi issued a decree on November 22 giving himself sweeping powers and placing his decisions beyond judicial review.

His decree also prevented the constitutional court from ruling on the constituent assembly’s legality, as it was meant to do on Sunday. A court had disbanded an earlier constituent assembly.

A coalition of leading dissidents formed in protest at the decree has warned that an ongoing judicial strike could escalate into mass civil disobedience.

The strike, called by the top Cassation Court and several other courts in protest at the decree, could place the referendum itself in jeopardy, if judges who normally supervise elections refuse to grant the vote legitimacy.

Rights activists have lambasted the draft charter, with the Human Rights Watch advocacy group saying it “protects some rights but undermines others”. Rushing through a draft while serious concerns about key rights protections remain unaddressed will create huge problems down the road that won’t be easy to fix,” the US organisation’s Middle East director Joe Stork said in a statement.

The draft retained a vague Mubarak-era constitution article stating that the “principles of Islamic law” are the main source of legislation.

But it added a new provision explaining that the principles of Islamic law were to be interpreted according to the tenets of Sunni Islamic rulings, a clause that Christian churches have opposed. — AFP.