CAIRO, 22 March 2007 — The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s biggest opposition force, said yesterday it will boycott next week’s referendum on constitutional amendments it says aim to block its members from power. Asked if the Muslim brotherhood had decided to boycott the referendum, senior leader Essam El-Erian told Reuters: “This is correct.”
“All referendums are rigged, and in these amendments the opinions of the political and nationalist forces or opposition parties were not respected. They are just being dictated by one party,” he added.
Egypt said on Tuesday it would hold a referendum on March 26 on 34 amendments billed by the President Hosni Mubarak as reforms but regarded by opponents as an attempt to entrench the ruling party’s grip on power.
“We decided to boycott the referendum,” Mohammed Habib, the Brotherhood’s deputy leader, told The Associated Press after a meeting of key leaders of the movement.
The Brotherhood is Egypt’s strongest Islamic opposition group. Its lawmakers hold Parliament seats as independents because the movement is officially banned since 1954. It is, however, tolerated within strict limits and suffers regular police crackdowns. Following the 2005 elections, the group currently has 88 Parliament members.
The boycott decision came a day after Mubarak set March 26 as the date for a referendum on constitutional reforms, more than a week before it was expected. The 34 amendments were approved Monday in the 454-seat Parliament, where deputies from Mubarak’s governing bloc hold more than two-thirds of the seats.
Mubarak has billed the amendments as part of a reform package aimed at increasing democracy in the country, which he has ruled unchallenged for a quarter century. It would be the first major change in the constitution since 1971. But the amendments, among other things, would prohibit the Brotherhood from ever becoming an official political party and also would bar it from running any candidates as independents, effectively keeping it from fielding candidates in any manner.
Some 500 students from Brotherhood marched through Cairo University to the beat of a drum yesterday in a mock funeral protesting at Parliament’s passage of the amendments.
“The amendments equal the death of Egypt — that’s why we reject them,” said the slogan written across the black coffin borne at the head of the long procession as it wound its way through the campus.
“The amendments mean unemployment, corruption, and hereditary succession,” said another banner.
