The Star Online: World Updates |
| Egypt to call March referendum this week - lawyer Posted: 27 Feb 2011 06:13 AM PST CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's ruling military council plans to hold a snap referendum next month on constitutional amendments, a lawywer who helped draft them said on Sunday. Sobhi Saleh, a member of the drafting committee which unveiled proposed constitutional amendements on Saturday, told Reuters the referendum would be formally announced this week and people would vote on the new basic law before the end of March.
The amendments include changes that will open up competition for the presidency, limit the time a leader can stay in the post and ensure judicial oversight of elections. Elections to both the upper and lower houses of parliament would follow the referendum, Saleh said, without saying when those elections would take place. Presidential elections would then happen after the legislative elections, he added. The military council to which president Hosni Mubarak handed power when he stepped down on Feb. 11 has dissolved both parliamentary chambers and has suspended the constitution. Saleh, a member of the long-banned Muslim Brotherhood and one of 10 members of the judicial committee appointed by the military, said generals would continue to exercise presidential powers until a new head of state is elected. "The council hands power to the people in a gradual process," he said. The military council has said it hopes to hold the elections within six months. Mubarak was serving his fifth six-year term when he was toppled, forced from office by a mass uprising driven in large part by demands for reform to put an end to the one-man rule that has defined Egyptian government for decades. The amendments proposed by the judicial committee reduce the presidential term to four years and say no leader can serve more than two consecutive terms. (Reporting by Marwa Awad; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Caroline Drees and Alastair Macdonald) Copyright © 2011 Reuters | ||
| China protest call smothered in police blanket Posted: 27 Feb 2011 06:13 AM PST BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - An online call for anti-government protests across China on Sunday instead brought an emphatic show of force by police determined to deter any buds of the kind of unrest that has shaken the Middle East.
Lines of police checked passers-by and warned away foreign photo journalists in downtown Beijing and Shanghai after a U.S.-based Chinese website spread calls for Chinese people to emulate the "Jasmine Revolution" sweeping the Middle East and stage gatherings in support of democratic change. Officials from China's ruling Communist Party have dismissed the idea that they could be hit by protests like those that have rippled across the Middle East. But a rash of detentions and censorship of online discussion of the Middle East have shown that Beijing is deeply nervous about any signs of opposition to its one-party rule. What started as a call for protest has instead become an opportunity for the Chinese government to brandish the big and sophisticated security forces funded by rapid economic growth. In Shanghai, police bundled away at least seven men, one of whom had been taking photos. Reuters TV filmed several policemen forcing a man in a brown jacket into a Public Security Bureau van, while other police held up an umbrella to block the view. In Beijing, uniformed police were joined by plainclothes officers who kept shoppers and journalists moving. Men in sanitation uniforms with armbands that said "Public Security Volunteer" used brooms to sweep pedestrians along. An American news videographer was kicked and beaten repeatedly in the face with brooms and taken into police custody, witnesses said. Other reporters were detained by police and some were roughed up, including one from Taiwan whose hand was injured, they said. A U.S. embassy spokesman said he was "disturbed" by reports of foreign journalists being physically harassed. "We call on the Chinese government to respect the rights of foreign journalists to report in China and urge public security authorities to protect the safety and well being of anyone who is subject to illegal harassment or intimidation," embassy spokesman Richard Buangan said. MCDONALD'S CLOSED BRIEFLY It was impossible to tell who were simply shoppers and who had shown up to support silently the call to demonstrate. Security was evident throughout Beijing's Wangfujing shopping street, one of the venues singled out as a protest site by the website, Boxun.com. Shoppers strolled along, but there were at least 40 public security vehicles at the south end of the pedestrian-only street. Passage was partly blocked by construction fences that went up late in the week outside a McDonald's restaurant, which the Boxun message designated as a place for the gathering. The McDonald's was shut down on Sunday afternoon for about an hour. "A few days ago some people were creating a stir over by the McDonald's, so they have stepped up security," said an employee at a nearby store. She said she did not want her name reported. At least one news photographer was ordered into a police vehicle and forced to delete photos from her camera. A similar call for protest a week ago brought out few people, and dozens of dissidents and human rights activists have been detained or warned to avoid such activities. It is not clear who is behind the appeals for protests. The government has blocked text messages and web postings in China that contain references to jasmine. The term "jasmine gatherings" comes from the protests in Tunisia that ousted long-time President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January in what supporters there called a "Jasmine Revolution". (Additional reporting by Sui-Lee Wee, Benjamin Kang Lim, David Gray and Petar Kujundzic in BEIJING; writing by Terril Yue Jones and Chris Buckley; Editing by Yoko Nishikawa) Copyright © 2011 Reuters |
| You are subscribed to email updates from The Star Online: World Updates To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
Tiada ulasan:
Catat Ulasan