CAIRO, March 19, (AFP): Egyptians turned out in droves Saturday to get their first taste of democracy after president Hosni Mubarak was forced to relinquish his 30-year grip on power last month in the face of mass protests.
Just five weeks after the strongman quit, an estimated 45 million voters were being asked to say “yes” or “no” to a package of constitutional changes intended to guide the Arab world’s most populous nation through fresh presidential and parliamentary elections within six months.
Long queues formed outside voting centres throughout the day, something unheard of in the Mubarak era, when turnout was always minuscule as voters assumed their ballots would make no difference.

Hordes of voters flocked to polling stations across Cairo from the posh neighbourhood of Zamalek to the working class district of Imbaba.
“Today we feel our vote can make a difference,” said pharmacy student Maraam Mohammed as she queued to vote with her mother and niece in Cairo’s twin city of Giza, site of the world-famous Pyramids.
AFP correspondents reported large turnout around the country from the Nile Delta to the Suez Canal to the Sinai peninsula. In Suez, returning officers even had to ask for more ballot boxes, security officials said.
Monitors from the Egyptian Association for Community Participation Enhancement (EACPE) reported that some voting centres had opened late because staff had been caught out by the numbers already queuing.

Authorised
Organisers said judges in charge of each of the nearly 50,000 polling stations had been authorised to countersign ballot papers to reassure voters following “numerous complaints” about ones that did not bear an official stamp.
Arab League chief Amr Mussa, an Egyptian who is a leading contender for president in eventual elections, hailed the huge turnout as he cast his vote in upscale Garden City. Preliminary results will be announced Sunday.
“Whether the Egyptian people say yes or no, that’s alright,” said Mussa, a staunch opponent of the transitional military government’s plans to make only limited changes to the Mubarak-era constitution before holding new elections.
“What is important is that people are coming. We need a new Egypt.”

Meanwhile, hundreds of Islamists hurled stones and shoes at Mohamed ElBaradei, a secular contender for Egypt’s presidency, as he went to cast his ballot in Cairo in a referendum on Saturday, an AFP reporter said.
“We don’t want you,” they shouted, throwing stones, shoes and water at the former UN nuclear watchdog chief as he tried to vote.
“He lives in the United States and wants to rule us, it’s out of the question,” one of them said.
“We don’t want an American agent,” said another.
ElBaradei, who was hit in the back by a stone, was forced to retreat to his car and leave.
Several members of the crowd interviewed by AFP before the assault identified themselves as Islamists without elaborating on their precise allegiance.
An official from the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and most organised opposition movement, denied members of his group were involved.
“There are many types of Islamists. It’s impossible that it was Muslim Brotherhood members, 100 percent impossible. We work with ElBaradei and coordinate with him,” Gamal Nassar told AFP.
ElBaradei, a staunch opponent of the planned changes, is widely respected on the world stage for his work as an international diplomat.

But under the Mubarak regime, he came under repeated criticism for his frequent trips abroad and was accused of being out of touch with the reality of Egyptian life.
He went to vote in Saturday’s referendum on constitutional reform after returning from a speaking engagement in New Delhi sponsored by one of India’s leading English-language newspapers.
The main advocates of a “yes” vote have been the Muslim Brotherhood — powerful and well-organised despite being outlawed under Mubarak — and elements of his former ruling National Democratic Party.
Critics say they are the ones who stand to benefit if elections are held too quickly, without giving time for groups stymied by three decades of authoritarian rule to organise at grass roots level.
ElBaradei, speaking at a conference in New Delhi, said the referendum on changes to the constitution dealt only with “minutiae”.
“It doesn’t talk about the imperial power of the president, it doesn’t talk about the distortion of the parliament, it doesn’t talk about the need to have an independent constituent assembly that represents everybody,” he said.

“So we are going to say no tomorrow. Most of the people who triggered the revolution are going to say no. I take a flight tonight to cast my vote to make sure that this will not happen.”
ElBaradei, on his first trip out of Egypt since the uprising that forced Mubarak to quit as president on February 11, described how he believed his countrymen had been transformed.
“The revolution was like divine intervention,” he told the India Today Conclave. “Nobody expected it but in hindsight it was not a surprise at all. It was like a pressure-cooker going on and on for years.
“After Mubarak was out and regime toppled, you saw different Egyptians who are confident, proud, happy and with a sense of dignity that they didn’t have before.”
ElBaradei, a former UN nuclear watchdog chief who won the Nobel peace prize in 2005, is lobbying for a longer period of transition to democracy than that scheduled by the military.
He said he feared the rush to elections would halt reform and leave out millions of Egyptians.
“Either we are going to have a clean slate or we are going to beautify the old regime, and these are two different things,” he said.