Egypt judicial council to oversee referendum
Author: Nehal El-Sherif
Cairo (dpa) - Egypt's Supreme Judicial Council agreed on Monday to oversee the upcoming referendum on the constitution, despite a call by an influential independent judiciary group to boycott it.
Judge Ahmed Abdul Rahman, a member of the council, said that the judiciary's top body had agreed to assign judges and prosecutors to oversee the vote.
He said no judge would be allowed to reject the assignment without an excuse acceptable to the council, the state-run daily Al-Ahram reported. Without oversight, the referendum might not be recognized.
President Mohammed Morsi has scheduled for December 15 a public vote on the new constitution, Egypt's first since a popular uprising forced his predecessor, Hosny Mubarak, to resign almost two years ago.
But on Sunday the head of the independent Judges Club, Ahmed al-Zend, called on the country's judges not to oversee it, in protest at a recent decree by Morsi which makes his decisions immune to judicial review.
The Club criticized Morsi for interfering in the judiciary's work and violating its independence.
The final draft of the constitution was hastily adopted by the constituent assembly on Friday amid an outcry from liberals and minority Christians who criticized the document as too heavily influenced by the Islamist majority in the panel which drew it up.
Around 11 independent and opposition Egyptian newspapers are expected to suspend publication on Tuesday to protest what they described as Morsi's "dictatorship."
Al-Masry Al-Youm and Al-Tahrir papers published a black poster on their front pages Monday, with the image of a human covered in newspaper pages, chained in a cell, and the line "A constitution that cancels rights and chains freedoms. No to dictatorship."
Protesters also gathered in Tahrir Square for the 11th day of a sit-in, begun after Morsi issued the decrees expanding his powers and barring courts from dissolving the Islamist-dominated constituent assembly.
The Supreme Constitutional Court suspended its sessions indefinitely Sunday after thousands of Islamists surrounded its building before it was to hear a case on the legality of the constituent assembly.
The court said in a statement that the protesters had prevented its judges from accessing its building in Cairo.
Egyptians living abroad are to begin voting on the new constitution on Saturday.
