Cairo: The press on Monday threw its weight behind the mounting protests against Egyptian President Mohammad Mursi.
A cartoon of a newspaper in human form chained in a cell was pasted on the front of independent papers including Al Watan and Al Masry Al Youm with the line “A constitution that cancels rights and shackles freedoms. No to dictatorship”.
Eleven independent and opposition party newspapers also declared they would not go to print on Tuesday.
The move is the latest in a string of protests against Mursi who last week issued a decree expanding his powers and rushed through the adoption of the draft constitution at the heart of a political and ideological battle in the country.
The Islamist president’s decree also stripped any judicial body of the right to annul the constituent assembly and senate.
The draft constitution has been criticised for failing to protect key rights and allowing a stricter interpretation of Islamic law.
Mursi’s supporters accuse the judges of being elitist holdouts from the Mubarak-era and of standing in the way of public support for the Islamists expressed in repeated votes since the strongman’s ouster early last year.
Mursi’s deputy, Judge Mahmoud Mekki, insisted in an interview with state television that the president did not plan to “abuse” the constitutional decree and wanted the transitional phase to end as quickly as possible.
A senior Islamist who helped draft Egypt’s new constitution, Amr Darrag, attacked the constitutional court as “highly politicised” and told AFP in an interview liberal opponents had been unwilling to compromise on the charter.
The standoff has polarised Egyptian opinion and sparked the biggest political crisis since Mursi assumed power in June as the country’s first ever civilian president and its first elected leader since Mubarak’s ouster in a popular uprising early last year.
Opposition protesters have called for fresh protests on Tuesday to against the referendum in a day dubbed “the final warning”.
