Rami G Khouri writes: The events in Iraq and Egypt these days are particularly important to follow and understand as best we can, because of what they tell us about how some Arab citizens and leaders behave at stages of the process in which they have the opportunity to shape their own political governance systems. For in Egypt and Iraq, most dramatically, alongside less striking events in Egypt, Syria, Yemen and other Arab countries, the most basic elements of state integrity, national identity and the legitimacy of power are all being challenged and reshaped. The bad news is that process includes political intemperance, violence and death. But the good news is that it mostly occurs nonviolently and will keep moving some Arab countries on the slow path to stable democratic republics.

It is not realistic to chart a single dynamic that explains disparate events in different Arab countries. However, the developments across half a dozen countries these days suggest to me that we can spot common features amid the political turbulence and violence all around us. The two most dramatic new examples in the past week to my mind have been the events in Fallujah and other parts of west-central Iraq, and the violence and unrest across several Egyptian cities. In both cases, local citizens have not only challenged the decisions of the democratically elected central government represented by the president of Egypt and the prime minister of Iraq; to some extent, they have also questioned the leader’s legitimacy in both cases, or at least challenged the leader to translate legitimacy into credibility. These are not isolated cases, either, for a deeper crisis of political integrity is spreading across many parts of the Arab world these days.

In Egypt, several local municipalities defiantly ignored the president’s curfew and martial law Monday, taking to the streets in the thousands to play football at 9 p.m., when the curfew was supposed to start. A few, like Mahalla, Suez and Alexandria, have even symbolically declared their autonomy or independence from the central government. They are not challenging the integrity of the Egyptian state, but rather the efficacy and equity of the central government’s policies.

The same applies to the tens of thousands of demonstrators in Iraq, who, like their Egyptian counterparts, are protesting the killing of demonstrators by the security services as well as a wider sense that the central government is not addressing the socio-economic and political rights of all citizens with diligence or fairness. In both cases, many ordinary citizens feel that one group is trying to monopolize power and seize control of the state. The Iraqi and Egyptian leaders have both acted with an authoritarianism that remind us of their predecessors’ policies in many ways., which Arabs now wish to leave behind them for good. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: As three Egyptian cities defied President Mohamed Morsi’s attempt to quell the anarchy spreading through their streets, the nation’s top general warned Tuesday that the state itself was in danger of collapse if the feuding civilian leaders could not agree on a solution to restore order.

Thousands of residents poured into the streets of the three cities, protesting a 9 p.m. curfew with another night of chants against Mr. Morsi and assaults on the police.

The president appeared powerless to stop them: he had already granted the police extralegal powers to enforce the curfew and then called out the army as well. His allies in the Muslim Brotherhood and their opposition also proved ineffectual in the face of the crisis, each retreating to their corners, pointing fingers of blame.

The general’s warning punctuated a rash of violent protests across the country that has dramatized the near-collapse of the government’s authority. With the city of Port Said proclaiming its nominal independence, protesters demanded the resignation of Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president, while people across the country appeared convinced that taking to the streets in protests was the only means to get redress for their grievances.

Just five months after Egypt’s president assumed power from the military, the cascading crisis revealed the depth of the distrust for the central government left by decades of autocracy, two years of convoluted transition and his own acknowledged missteps in facing the opposition. With cities in open rebellion and the police unable to tame crowds, the very fabric of society appears to be coming undone. [Continue reading…]

Al Jazeera reports: Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has declared a 30-day state of emergency and a night-time curfew in three cities along the Suez Canal that have seen deadly clashes in recent days.

In a televised address late on Sunday, Morsi said the emergency measures in Port Said, Ismailia and Suez would take effect on Monday from 9:00pm local time (19:00 GMT) to 6:00am (04:00 GMT), warning that more action would be taken to stem the latest eruption of violence across much of the country.

“I have said I am against any emergency measures but I have said that if I must stop bloodshed and protect the people then I will act,” Morsi said.

He also called for dialogue with top politicians starting on Monday to resolve the situation.

Deadly clashes across the country between protesters and police have killed at least 48 people since Friday, when Egyptians commemorated the two-year anniversary of the revolution that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak.

McClatchy reports: To mark the two-year anniversary of an uprising that led to their ascension, members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood came to the town of Faiyum on Friday with a simple message: The government may not be providing services for you, but the powerful social organization supporting it still can.

They fanned out in this historic, impoverished town and picked up 2-week-old trash thrown between apartment buildings. Brotherhood doctors carried boxes of medicine into makeshift clinics to distribute to the ill. Merchants opened subsidized food, gas and clothing markets.

One hundred miles north down the Nile River and a world away, thousands gathered at Tahrir Square, a now international symbol of its literal name, liberation. The opposition, unable to coalesce around a political platform that can unseat the Brotherhood, was back protesting in the streets, battling police tear gas with rocks, stagnation with chants.

But regular protests in Tahrir have done more to alienate voters than to topple Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. And the Brotherhood’s social campaign no longer buys the votes it once did. There is a patina of disillusionment over millions of Egyptians like Faiyum resident Safa Ramadan, 43, who is too hungry to embrace the luster of revolutionary change, too humiliated to appreciate another handout.

Ramadan’s husband does not make enough money to keep up with rising prices brought by near constant instability. So she pulled her 12-year-old son out of school and made him get a job as a garbage man, or perhaps more aptly, garbage boy. Friday, she stood over baskets of fruit and vegetables, swarmed by flies, and fretted over whether she could afford the extra 10 cents a kilo of tomatoes will cost her this week.

“The prices never go down. They always go up by a lot. What am I supposed to do? Should I pay for school or pay for food?” she asked, draped in a dark headscarf and gown. “Morsi has not done anything for us.” [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: At least 22 people have been killed in the Egyptian city of Port Said amid violent protests that followed a court’s sentencing of 21 people to death on charges related to clashes between rival football fans last year.

Those killed on Saturday morning included two policemen shot dead at a prison in the north-eastern city where demonstrators had gathered to protest against the death sentences of the 21 men held inside. There are reports that more than 200 people have been injured.

The Egyptian army has deployed armoured personnel carriers and military police on the streets of the city.

The death sentences, which were announced live on television, relate to clashes in Port Said on 1 Febraury 2012 after Cairo’s Al Ahly beat the local team, Al Masry. Supporters of Al Masry attacked Al Ahly fans, causing a stampede for the exits. The police did not intervene in the violence except to switch off the stadium lights, and in the confusion the Cairo fans were crushed as crowds pushed against a locked gate which gave way under the pressure. Seventy-four people were killed.

Fans in Cairo cheered the verdict as those in Port Said protested, blocking streets and attacking police.

The Egypt editors at Jadaliyya write: The common, seemingly benign question “where were you during the revolution” leaves most partisans of the January 25 Revolution with a strong sense of unease. While it is obvious that the question, whenever it comes up, is almost always posed in reference to the 2011 eighteen days of national protests that led to the end of Hosni Mubarak’s thirty-year rule, this innocent query fails to do justice to the belief that the revolution and the eighteen-day uprising are not one and the same. The phrasing of the question, moreover, proceeds on an assumption that the revolution ended with Mubarak’s departure, and that what followed was “politics as usual.” This assumption happens to coincide with a narrative that successive wielders of power have tried to sell to the Egyptian people over the past two years, namely one that purports that the revolution succeeded (and therefore “ended”) with Mubarak’s departure, and that dissenters need to vacate public squares and factories, and begin deferring to their “elders” among the politicians, the legislators, and the constitution writers. “Where were you during the revolution,” in other words, is a question that evokes our own fears about the counter-revolution and its efforts to build a popular consciousness that reduces the January 25 Revolution to an event of the past—one that warrants commemoration and celebration—and not a living phenomenon and an ongoing struggle that has ways to go. These concerns are heightened at a time when it has become acceptable in international media to call revolutionaries “anti-Morsi protesters” or “the secular opposition,” embracing the distortive view that the struggle for revolutionary change in Egypt has taken a backseat to ideological spats and partisan politics.

This is to say that partisans of the revolution in Egypt confront more than just a battle against the wielders of power as they continue to resist calls for transformative change, demands for social and economic rights, and efforts to create a meaningful social depth for the January 25 Revolution. They also face a serious battle against the hegemonic narrative that the days of revolution in Egypt are over, and that the country has re-entered into a state of normalcy in which contentious political action is no longer deemed socially or legally acceptable. [Continue reading…]

Commenting on Mohamed Morsi’s rise to power, Yasmine El Rashidi writes: Many theories still circulate, trying to explain how he did it. The Brotherhood, it is said, propped up the Nasserist candidate Hamdeen Sabahy to bring Morsi’s Islamist rival Aboul Fotouh down. The US government quietly decided to support the Brotherhood. The Mubarak strongman Ahmed Shafik actually won but the Brotherhood threatened mayhem and so results were fudged.

Whatever the case, Morsi’s win seemed less about his popularity and the efficiency of the Muslim Brotherhood as a campaigning machine, and more about the opposition, particularly the splintered vote of the liberal and secular and leftist factions, whose choices of candidates offered little variation in their rhetoric and plans. Up until the final moment at polling stations back in June, many people I spoke to said they were undecided. Taken together, however, the opposition candidates received a sizable chunk of the vote.

Morsi won by three percent — 51.7 percent to Shafik’s 48.3 — while just over half the eligible electorate of 51 million took part. His supporters these days justify his actions as taken “on behalf of the people”; but the nation was not overwhelmingly behind him and his proclaimed ideals.

Was the nation divided between those in favor of the old regime and those in favor of the Islamists? Or was it the case that millions of young Egyptians who had taken to the streets to oppose Mubarak were voting “no” to Mubarak’s Shafik, rather than “yes” to Morsi? As the prominent newspaper editor Hassanein Heikal has said at dinner parties and on TV: “It was not that people knew what they wanted and were voting for it. They simply knew what they didn’t want, and they were voting against it.” Many of my own friends — who identify themselves as liberal, secular, “revolutionary”—voted against the possibility of a return to the life we had known. [Continue reading…]

Wael Eskandar writes: The politics of the past two years have generated widespread interest in the historical relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and Egypt’s wielders of power, especially at a time when observers are eager to understand the prospects for accommodation (or adversity) between the MB and traditional bureaucratic powers inside the Egyptian state, such as the military establishment.

For instance, the circumstances surrounding the election of President Mohamed Morsi in June 2012 have raised numerous questions about the MB’s relationship with Egypt’s military rulers. During the lead-up to the announcement of the election results, it seemed that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) was bargaining with the Brotherhood over the future of the country. While official results were due on 20 June, their announcement was postponed to 24 June with little transparency on why the official vote count was being withheld and what was happening behind the scenes.

MB statements at the time suggested that the SCAF was holding the results hostage until the group accepts the continuation of military leaders’ reserved powers as per the constitutional annex that SCAF had issued on 17 June 2012 shortly before the end of voting. Before it was annulled last August by President Morsi, the annex to the Constitutional Declaration set limitations on presidential authority and granted the SCAF legislative powers in light of the dissolution of parliament in mid-June. In its official response that same month, the MB vowed to fight for presidential powers and called on its supporters to occupy Tahrir Square in protest of SCAF’s constitutional annex. Eventually, official results were released declaring Morsi’s victory. The MB’s nominee ended up swearing the oath to the Supreme Constitutional Court, thus implicitly recognizing the dissolution of parliament and the SCAF-sponsored constitutional framework that the Brotherhood supposedly rejected. Morsi became Egypt’s first elected president after the January 25 Revolution, yet one question remains lurking in the background: at what price? [Continue reading…]

Charles Holmes writes: The ideological vision of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who led the 1952 revolution that overthrew Egypt’s monarchy, has defined the last six decades of Egyptian politics: Arab nationalism, vehement anti-colonialism, the nationalization of the country’s economy, and the preeminence of the military are the foundation on which modern Egypt is built. While Nasserism was arguably successful in helping Egypt emerge from its political past, it has long been in slow decline — and is now on the verge of collapse.

The crumbling of the Mubarak regime two years ago momentarily wrenched Egypt’s population out of a decades-old slumber. But today, many vestiges of Nasser’s Egypt — key structures of state, society, and the economy — linger on. They are the creaking, dysfunctional machinery of a protectionist system still striving to shut out the forces of modernity and globalization in order to preserve the vested interests of an elite few.

Egypt’s insidious state security establishment is a prime example of the country’s unfinished revolution. The Jan. 25 protests proved to be the watershed moment when — for all its networks of informants, secret police officers, and legions of thugs — it had no answer to modern technology, digital media, and mobile communications. While describing the uprising as a “Facebook Revolution” remains misleading, protesters understood how their technological advantages enabled them to outmaneuver a clumsy and brutal security apparatus. Two years on, however, the Interior Ministry remains unreformed, the scars of years of brutalization of Egyptian society are yet to be healed, and civilian law enforcement faces an undetermined future.

Depressingly then, though no less predictably, the Muslim Brotherhood has quickly revealed itself as representing a continuation of this broken system. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press reports: Violence erupted across Egypt on Friday as tens of thousands took to the streets to deliver an angry backlash against President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood, demanding regime change on the second anniversary of the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak. At least seven people were killed.

Two years to the day after protesters first rose up against the autocratic ex-president, the new phase of Egypt’s upheaval was on display: the struggle between ruling Islamists and their opponents, played out against the backdrop of a worsening economy.

Rallies turned to clashes in multiple cities around Egypt, with police firing tear gas and protesters throwing stones. At least six people, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed in Suez, where protesters set ablaze a building that once housed the city’s local government. Another person died in clashes in Ismailia, another Suez Canal city east of Cairo.

At least 480 people were injured nationwide, the Health Ministry said, including five with gunshot wounds in Suez, raising the possibility of a higher death toll.

Jared Malsin reports: Ramadan Romih, the heavyset manager of the White House Net, an Internet café up the street from the U.S. embassy in Cairo, sat on a chair on the sidewalk outside his shop, smoking a large tobacco water pipe. He hasn’t had many customers recently, he says, because of the high concrete wall blocking the street next to his shop. The wall was built by the Egyptian government this past November to ward off demonstrators from nearby Tahrir Square away from the embassy.

Romih, 41, commutes downtown from a working-class neighborhood near the pyramids. His shop ordinarily depends on foot traffic from the bustling business districts surrounding Tahrir Square, but now because of an elaborate system of walls and barbed-wire roadblocks built by the authorities, the area near the embassy has been cut off from the core of the downtown.

As a result, he said, his business is “at zero.” By late afternoon that day his revenue was only 20 Egyptian pounds, or a little over $3. “People should dig tunnels like they do in Gaza,” he said, waving his water-pipe hose at the unsightly wall.

Two of the storefronts adjacent to White House Net were gutted, Romih said, during recent clashes between demonstrators and police. The burned-out shell of a car still lies upside down in the road in front of the shop. Across the street, men in business suits were hoisting themselves over a tall iron fence in order to get home from work, handing briefcases to one another over the top of the barrier. Armed security men stationed at a checkpoint leading to the embassy looked on.

Because of the government’s walls, scenes like this one are the new normal in the upscale neighborhood of Garden City and other areas south of Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the winter 2011 uprising that ended the 30-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. [Continue reading…]

Committee to Protect Journalists: “There is a growing trend of targeting independent and critical voices under President Mohamed Morsi’s government, which is especially worrying in light of a lack of protection for the press under the new constitution,” said Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. “Egypt is taking a large step back toward Mubarak-era practices.”

Today, Magdi Algallad, editor of independent daily newspaper Al-Watan, was charged with insulting the president–a criminal offense–in connection with published cartoons, according to the newspaper.
Wednesday, Al-Masry al-Youm, one of Egypt’s leading independent dailies, said it is being investigated by the prosecutor-general following a complaint from the president’s office, which accused it of publishing false news. Also Wednesday, the prosecutor-general referred Abdel-Halim Qandil, editor of independent weekly Sawt al-Umma, to the North of Giza prosecutor for official investigation, according to news reports. The accusations relate to an article Qandil wrote in October under the title “You are a liar, Morsi.”

Under Egypt’s legal system, complaints are filed to the prosecutor-general’s office, which does an initial investigation into whether there is enough evidence to refer the case to a judge  or a local prosecutor for further investigation. Suspects can be detained during this stage of investigation. The judge or local prosecutor can then refer the case to a criminal court for formal charges. The current prosecutor-general, Talaat Abdullah, was appointed by Morsi in November.

Also this week, the prosecutor-general’s office said it referred Bassem Youssef, who hosts a satirical TV news program called “Al Bernameg” on independent channel CBC, to a judge for investigation on accusations of insulting the president by showing Morsi’s picture printed on a pillow. Youssef, who has actively criticized Morsi and Islamist groups, is widely called Egypt’s Jon Stewart in reference to the host of “The Daily Show” satirical news program in the U.S. Appearing on CNN two weeks earlier with CPJ board member Christiane Amanpour, Youssef played down risks of prosecution for his commentary.

In December, TV host Mahmoud Saad, who presents a daily news show called “End of Day” at Al-Nahar private TV station, was investigated by a Cairo prosecutor for insult because of an official complaint by Morsi, according to news reports. Saad hosted Manal Omar, an Egyptian psychiatrist who presented a psychological analysis of Morsi on the show. Saad was released on bail after six hours and no further steps have been taken.

The series of investigations and charges are the latest in a long string of attacks on Egypt’s independent press. Late in 2012, journalists who covered demonstrations against Morsi and the new constitution were physically targeted in the streets. At least five journalists were struck by rubber bullets in November, and one, Al-Hosseiny Abou Deif, died in December.

Also last month, several independent channels at Egypt’s Media Production City were besieged for nearly a week by Islamist supporters of Morsi, according to news reports. The demonstrators staged a sit-in to protest the news channels’ critical coverage of Egypt’s new constitution, which was passed by referendum despite widespread controversy and allegations by the opposition that it was rushed.

Al Jazeera reports: An Egyptian satirist who has made fun of President Mohamed Morsi on television will be investigated by prosecutors following an accusation that he undermined the leader’s standing, a judicial source has said.

Bassem Youssef’s case will likely increase concerns over freedom of speech in the post-Hosni Mubarak era, especially when the country’s new constitution includes provisions criticised by rights activists for, among other things, said the source on Tuesday, forbidding insults.

In a separate case, one of Egypt’s leading independent newspapers said it was being investigated by the prosecutor following a complaint from the presidency, which accused it of publishing false news.

Youssef rose to fame following the uprising that swept Mubarak from power in February 2011 with a satirical online programme that has been compared to Jon Stewart’s Daily Show in the US.

He has since had his own show on Egyptian television and mocked Morsi’s repeated use of the word “love” in his speeches by starting one of his programmes with a love song, holding a red pillow with the president’s face printed on it.

The prosecutor general ordered an investigation into a formal complaint against Youssef by an Islamist lawyer. The complaint accuses him of “insulting” Morsi, an Islamist backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, and “undermining his standing”.

Human rights activists say it is the latest in a series of criminal defamation cases that bode ill for free speech as Egypt reshapes its institutions after Mubarak was toppled.

At Open Democracy, Zaid Al-Ali writes: Following the results of the referendum, in which 63.8% of voters appear to have approved the text, the new Egyptian constitution is now the law of the land. The turnout was far lower than anyone expected, with just over 32.9% of the population making their way to the polls, which means that the constitution has been approved by a mere 21% of eligible voters, clearly not a resounding victory for its proponents.

The poor showing will have a number of consequences, including the prospect that the new constitution’s popular legitimacy may be challenged for some time to come, which in turn will detract from the effort to resolve many of the more pressing problems that Egypt is facing today.

The debate surrounding the new constitution has been acrimonious to say the least. Many of the constitution’s most ardent critics have been scouring the text for evidence that the country’s Islamist movements are preparing to create a morality police or that the legal age of marriage is about to be lowered to 9. Many of these accusations are either baseless or merely leftover provisions from the 1971 constitution and were never applied in any meaningful sense, which will likely to continue being the case under the new constitution. The reality is that, when measured against Egyptian constitutional tradition, the new text brings a number of improvements to the protection of certain rights and to the system of government and is not the catastrophe that many have been so determined to identify.

However, if the measure is changed, there are perfectly valid reasons to be opposed to the new constitution. For example, considering recent developments internationally in the field of constitutional law, particularly in many African and Latin American countries, or considering even the aspirations that were expressed through the Egyptian revolution, the text leaves the reader disappointed.

Apart from the fact that much of the drafting is vague, a number of important rights are also lacking, which has driven many activists to ardently oppose the text. It also does not present a convincing vision in many areas, including decentralization, the role of independent agencies and civil/military relations. [Continue reading…]

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports: An Egyptian official says the country’s top prosecutor has ordered an investigation into accusations against opposition leaders of incitement to overthrow the regime.

The prosecution official said Thursday a judge will investigate the report filed last month accusing Mohammed ElBaradei, Nobel Prize laureate and former head of the U.N. nuclear agency, along with Amr Moussa, former foreign minister and Hamdeen Sabahi, a former presidential candidate, of inciting the overthrow of Egypt’s first elected president, Mohammed Morsi.

Reuters reports: An Islamist-backed Egyptian constitution won approval in a referendum, rival camps said on Sunday, after a vote the opposition said would sow deep social divisions in the Arab world’s most populous nation.

The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, which propelled President Mohamed Mursi to power in a June election, said an unofficial tally showed 64 percent of voters backed the charter after two rounds of voting that ended with a final ballot on Saturday.

An opposition official also told Reuters their unofficial count showed the result was a “yes” vote, while party spokesmen said there had been a series of abuses during the voting.

The main opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front, responded to the defeat by saying it was moving towards forming a single political party to challenge the Islamists who have dominated the ballot box since strongman Hosni Mubarak was overthrown two years ago.

Members of the opposition, taking heart from a low turnout of about 30 percent of voters, pledged to keep up pressure on Mursi through peaceful protests and other democratic means.

Rachel Shabi writes: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters have tried to frame the current crisis in religious terms, casting opposition to their speedily drafted constitution as the petulance of an anti-Islamist, liberal elite. Media analysis has often replicated this theme: in one corner stands Brotherhood-propelled President Mohamed Morsi who has the supposed blessings of a religious population. And in the other corner, the “secular” opposition, banging on about small details of a constitution that isn’t that bad. Such wrongheaded analysis prompted Egypt expert Dr HA Hellyer from the Brookings Institution to politely request that western media “knock it off“.

But the result of Egypt’s first referendum on the constitution (a second referendum takes place this Saturday, in districts that have yet to vote) has exposed some of the real sticking points. The referendum had to be split into two stages because so few Egyptian judges agreed to supervise it. And for all its legendary mobilising powers, of the votes cast the Brotherhood wasn’t able to get more than 57% for its constitution. Not long ago, the Brotherhood could rely on voter support reaching over 70%. And less than a third of the electorate turned out – though that might be because of the long queues and the difficulty in voting. In an atmosphere of mistrust and mismanagement, allegations of vote-rigging are rife.

But if Egyptians are, as results indicate, losing faith in the Brotherhood, it isn’t because the organisation is Islamist, but because it has so far been rubbish at ruling. Many believe the Brotherhood has kept its promises to power, but not to the people. Crucially, President Morsi’s economic policy has deepened the neo-liberalism that brought so much misery during the Mubarak era and was a key component of the uprising against him. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press reports: Just under a third of voters turned out for the first stage of the referendum on a constitution meant to be a historic milestone in setting Egypt’s future — a showing critics say deepens doubts over the legitimacy of a charter that has already polarized the country.

The dismal showing also raises the question whether Egyptians have been turned off by the turmoil that has characterized the country’s politics throughout the nearly two years since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak’s autocratic regime.

Last Saturday’s voting took place in 10 of Egypt’s 27 provinces, including Cairo and the nation’s second largest city Alexandria. Some 26 million voters were eligible to vote, but only 32 percent of them did. Voting in the remainder 17 provinces will take place the coming Saturday.

The turnout was the second lowest of the relentless series of five nationwide elections that Egyptians have been called to in the 22 months since Mubarak’s fall in last year’s popular uprising. The highest was nearly 60 percent in the election of parliament’s lawmaking lower chamber. The lowest was an embarrassing 8 percent for the vote for the upper chamber, a largely toothless body that the public cares little about.

Besides the low turnout, preliminary results show that the “yes” vote carried the first round only by a slim margin of 56 percent — hardly the resounding endorsement the Islamists were looking for to silence the increasingly vocal and united opposition that called on supporters to vote “no.”

For weeks, legal experts in Egypt have said if turnout is low and the final majority in favor of the constitution is lower than 70 percent, it would raise damaging questions about how representative the document is of the nation.