Majority Of Egyptians Accept Army's Plan

Egyptians voted 77% in favour of the military’s plans for a swift return to civilian rule after mass protests ousted president Hosni Mubarak last month, official results showed Sunday.
More than 14 million Egyptians, or 77.2% of those who voted, approved the constitutional amendments intended to guide the Arab world’s most populous nation through new presidential and parliamentary elections within six months, organizing commission chairman Mohammed Attiya said.
Four million, or 22.8%, said “no”, Attiya told a news conference.
A total of 41% or 18.5 million of the estimated 45 million eligible voters turned out on Saturday to seize their first taste of democracy, after 18 days of demonstrations ended Mubarak’s 30 years of authoritarian rule, he added.
The turnout for Mubarak-era elections was always minuscule as none was genuinely competitive and in any case nobody had any faith their vote would count amid widespread vote-rigging and fraud.
The referendum on the limited changes to the constitution inherited from the Mubarak regime had been bitterly fought.
The youth groups which spearheaded the protest movement, and a host of secular political parties and opposition figures, called for a “no” vote, saying the timetable being set by the military was too tight for new movements to organize at grass-roots level.
But the changes were supported by the Muslim Brotherhood powerful and well-organized despite being outlawed under Mubarak and elements of his former ruling National Democratic Party.
The military council, which has ruled Egypt since Mubarak’s resignation on Feburary 11, was also widely perceived to back the changes, although its members remained studiously non-partisan in all their official pronouncements.
The army’s stock has been running high ever since it sided with the protesters against Mubarak. The military council has been keen to hand over the reins of power as quickly as possible and keep the army above the political fray. It gave a panel of experts just 10 days to draw up the amendments put to Saturday’s referendum, which was held only five weeks after Mubarak’s ouster.