Egypt scrambling ahead of polls opening Saturday

CAIRO – Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s decision to rush a referendum on a new constitution already has polarized the country, which has been wracked by widespread protests over how the document was drafted.

Now the balloting itself appears likely to heighten those divisions. With just two days to go before Egyptians are to begin voting on the constitution, there are signs that the rushed vote will be marred by irregularities, a shortage of judges and far fewer international monitors than in past elections.

That’s likely to mean that questions about the legitimacy of the vote will exacerbate tensions and lead to more protests and possibly violence.

On Thursday, the largest opposition group, the National Salvation Front, said it wouldn’t recognize the results if the voting weren’t transparent and “legitimate.” It claimed that it already had found evidence of rigged votes in the international balloting that took place earlier this week, including marked lists suggesting that voters had participated when they had not and polling stations that closed early. The government denied the charges.

The group also insisted on international monitors at polling stations. But to date, the largest groups that have monitored past elections here, including the Carter Center from the United States, have said they don’t have time to prepare. Instead, only Egyptians will monitor the process.

That seemed likely to lead to complaints that the monitors themselves are biased. The Muslim Brotherhood, the group through which Morsi rose to prominence, very likely will have the most monitors. Meanwhile, opposition groups were pleading Thursday for volunteers to register as monitors.

Egyptians spent months preparing for the May and June presidential elections. International monitoring groups took months to help guide and fund the process. But this referendum has been pulled together so fast that the judges who are intended to oversee it are scrambling to figure out what they’re supposed to do.

Workers said privately that the elections commission didn’t have enough judges and the vote would be “messy.”

The shortage of judges – thousands are boycotting the referendum to protest Morsi’s decision to give himself absolute judicial authority – forced the government to set two dates for voting so that the judges can be double-tasked. Egyptians in the nation’s 10 largest governorates, including Cairo and Alexandria, will vote Saturday. The rest of the country will consider the constitution on Dec. 22.