Cairo: Egypt’s most widely read independent newspapers did not publish on Tuesday in protest against the Islamist-led government’s drive to hold a snap referendum on a new constitution after sweeping aside judicial obstacles.

The move was in order to “stand up to tyranny,” independent daily Al Tahrir said on its website.

“The Egyptian Independent objects to continued restrictions on media liberties, especially after hundreds of Egyptians gave their lives for freedom,” read a message on that newspaper’s website, its only viewable content on Tuesday morning.

Daily Al Masry Al Youm said the papers were “protesting against the articles on the press in the draft constitution, and reject [President Mohammad Mursi’s) November 22 decree.”

Mursi ignited a storm of protest when he temporarily assumed extraordinary powers on November 22 to prevent a judiciary still dominated by appointees of ousted predecessor Hosni Mubarak from derailing a troubled political transition.

The Islamists, who have already pushed the army out of the political driving seat, sense their moment has come to shape the future of Egypt, a longtime US ally whose peace treaty with Israel is a cornerstone of Washington’s Middle East policy.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, who staged a huge pro-Mursi demonstration on Saturday, are confident that enough members of the judiciary will be available to oversee the December 15 referendum, despite calls by some judges for a boycott.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Hesham Qandil, a technocrat with Islamist sympathies, said in an interview with CNN: “We certainly hope that things will quiet down after the referendum is completed.”

He said the constitution was “in no way a perfect text” that everyone had agreed to, but that a “majority consensus” favoured moving forward with the referendum in 11 days’ time.

The Muslim Brotherhood, now tasting power via the ballot box for the first time in eight decades of struggle, wants to protect its gains and appears ready to override street protests by what it sees as an unrepresentative minority.

It is also determined to stop the courts, which have already dissolved the Islamist-led elected lower house of parliament, from throwing more obstacles into their blueprint for change.

Mohammad Al Baradei, the coordinator of an opposition National Salvation Front, has said Mursi must rescind his decree, drop plans for the referendum and agree on a new, more representative constituent assembly to draft a democratic constitution.

In an opinion piece published in the Financial Times, he accused Mursi and the Brotherhood of believing that “with a few strokes of a pen, they can slide [Egypt] back into a coma”.

Al Baradei, former head of the UN nuclear watchdog, wrote: “If they continue to try, they risk an eruption into violence and chaos that will destroy the fabric of Egyptian society.”

Despite charges that they are anti-Islamist and politically motivated, judges say they are following legal codes in their rulings. Experts say some political changes rushed through in the past two years have been on shaky legal ground.

A Western diplomat said the Islamists were counting on a popular yearning for restored normality and economic stability.

“All the messages from the Muslim Brotherhood are that a vote for the constitution is one for stability and a vote against is one for uncertainty,” he said, adding that the cost of the strategy was a “breakdown in consensus politics”.