CAIRO, December 23 (RIA Novosti) – Over 60 percent of Egyptians voted for the country’s new Constitution at a referendum that ended on Saturday, the local media reported on Sunday, citing preliminary vote results.
About 63 percent of Egyptians supported the country’s first post-revolutionary Constitution at the referendum’s two stages held on December 15 and 22, including the opinion of Egyptian citizens who cast their votes abroad while slightly over 36 percent voted against it.
Over 51 million citizens were eligible to vote in Egypt, which has a population of 83 million people. Over half a million citizens cast their votes at polling stations abroad. The referendum’s official results are expected to be announced at a special press conference of Egypt’s High Election Commission in Cairo on Monday.
If the new Constitution is approved by the majority of voters, elections for a new parliament are to be held in a few months, ending the transitional period that has lasted since Hosni Mubarak’s almost thirty-year-long presidency was ended by the January 2011 uprising.
