A majority of Egyptian voters approved the new military-backed constitution according to the numbers released Thursday by individual election committees across the nation.
Nearly 98 percent of the voters in 25 of 27 provinces of the country gave their nod for the draft charter. Citing early results, Egypt's main newspaper, Al-Ahram, said the constitution was approved by an "unprecedented majority," reports Reuters.
The vote held Tuesday and Wednesday is a landmark for the interim government that came into power after the removal of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi last July. The results bring the army chief General Fattah al-Sisi closer to his bid for the presidency. The official results are likely to be declared Saturday.
The draft is a heavily modified version of a constitution written by Morsi's Islamist allies and approved in December 2012, reported the Associated Press.
The total voter turnout was more than 55 percent, an Interior Ministry official told Reuters. Matrouh, a popular Islamist province, witnessed the lowest turnout with only 20 percent of the voters actually voting.
There have been reports of serious violations and irregularities in the voting. "Politically motivated violence, intimidation and repression from state and non-state actors limited and conditioned citizens' political and electoral participation," a Berlin-based global corruption watchdog, Transparency International, said in a statement released Thursday, according to Reuters.
For instance, a local anti-corruption group called Shayfeencom ('We Are Watching You') said that one of its election observers was detained and tortured by security forces in the Suez Canal city of Port Said after an argument at a polling station Wednesday, reports The Washington Post.
Mohamed Qadri Said, a retired army general working at the state's Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic and Political Studies said that this was a "convenient time" for General Sisi to make an announcement for presidential run. "I do not see anyone else running against him. He has done great things to the country and the people like him."
