Egypt to hold vote over constitutional amendments in March

Egypt to hold vote over constitutional amendments in March

2011-03-05 06:47:37 GMT+7 (ICT)

CAIRO, EGYPT (BNO NEWS) -- Egypt's military council on Friday announced that a referendum on the constitutional amendments will be held on March 19, the Daily News Egypt reported.

The voting process is scheduled to begin at 8:00 a.m. local time and will end at 7:00 p.m. Egyptian citizens will vote on the proposed amendments to the constitution's articles 75, 76, 77, 88, 93, 139 and 148, the cancellation of article 179, and inserting a paragraph and two items in article 189.

The military council took control of Egypt after Hosni Mubarak, who led Egypt as president for three decades, stepped down after weeks of anti-government protests by crowds calling for greater democracy and respect of human rights.

The Army authorities also dissolved the parliament and suspended the constitution on February 18. The council appointed a ten-member panel of independent legal experts to propose constitutional amendments to address demands of the people.

On Friday, the experts' panel finalized the constitutional amendments, which proposes to reduce presidency to two terms, each one running for four years. The other proposed changes involving regulating legislative elections as well as parliamentary and presidential jurisdictions.

Despite the advances in Egypt, the United Nations announced the deployment of a human rights mission to the African nation in order to asses the human rights situation following the change of leadership.

In addition, the European Union said that the transition to democracy could take at least a year and not six months as planned by the transitional government as the planned period is not enough to have fair and competitive parliamentary and presidential elections.

So far, many factions have announced their intentions to join the presidential election campaign, including the Muslim Brotherhood, banned since 1954, and Amr Moussa, the Secretary-General of the Arab League.

The Egyptian constitution is made of 211 articles. It was adopted in 1971 and has been amended three times, in 1980, 2005 and 2007.

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