Petr David Josek/Associated Press
Demonstrators camping out in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Monday.
CAIRO — A day after President Mohamed Morsi formally directed the military to help keep public order and authorized soldiers to arrest civilians, a spokesman on Monday sought to draw distinctions between the order and the forms of martial law that the Egyptian Army had previously imposed.
The spokesman, Khaled al-Qazzaz, said the president empowered the military for the limited purpose of protecting polling stations during Saturday’s constitutional referendum. He also said the president had instructed the army to refer any civilians arrested by soldiers to a civilian court for trial, instead of military tribunals, reversing the blanket authorizations that the Egyptian military has long demanded when it takes on a policing role in the streets.
“This is very different from what happened under the SCAF,” said Mr. Qazzaz, referring to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which ruled Egypt after President Hosni Mubarak was ousted and until Mr. Morsi took office. “There will be no military trials.”
But Heba Morayef, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, noted that the text of the order allowed the military to keep taking civilians to military courts. “Had he wanted to,” Ms. Morayef said, “President Morsi could have stipulated that the military’s jurisdiction would have been limited in this case and that every civilian will be referred to a civilian court, but he chose not to.”
Mr. Morsi’s latest assurances were unlikely to comfort his growing cast of opponents, who have taken to the streets in large numbers repeatedly since late November, when he issued a decree putting his decisions above the law. The president was forced to rescind most of his decree, but he has not budged on a central opposition demand: that he cancel the Saturday referendum on the constitutional draft.
Faced with the possibility of the vote, Egypt’s opposition parties on Monday were weighing their approach to the referendum and said they would continue to hold large protests. The biggest opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front, said it would announce Tuesday whether it would call for a boycott of the referendum, or instead urge the public to vote down the draft charter, which opposition groups have criticized as deeply flawed and written by a panel representing narrow, Islamist interests.
There appeared to be divisions and flux within the opposition. On Sunday, the opposition used language that seemed to favor a boycott, saying in a statement that it rejected “lending legitimacy to a referendum that will definitely lead to more sedition and division.” But in an interview broadcast Monday, the coalition’s coordinator, Mohamed ElBaradei, said: “We might go to the vote.”
During the interview with Christiane Amanpour of CNN, Mr. ElBaradei, the former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, urged Mr. Morsi to delay the referendum for a few months, saying that the draft constitution — a “sham,” he called it — did not adequately protect women, freedom of expression or religion.
Mr. ElBaradei asserted that at least half of the country harbored similar reservations about the charter, and insisted that the opposition’s tactics — holding large protests and raising the possibility of a boycott — were not just obstructionism by groups who have struggled to mount a credible challenge to the better-organized Islamist groups.
“We are at a cross in the road,” he said. “It’s not that we’re fighting for the sake of fighting. It’s not that we’re sore losers.”
Mr. ElBaradei left open several possible courses of action, including a boycott. “If need be, we probably will go to the polls and make sure the document will not pass. Even if it will pass, we will continue to fight.”
There were other signs of momentum toward a highly contested vote on Saturday. The April 6th Revolutionary Youth Group, which is not a member of the coalition but coordinates activities with the National Salvation Front, began a campaign urging a no vote, called “Your Constitution does not represent us.”
A group representing administrative court judges said its members would supervise the referendum, under certain conditions, demanding a secure environment and even life insurance policies for judges, possibly smoothing the way for a credible contest. Other judges’ groups have said they would boycott the vote. A spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist party that forms the primary base of Mr. Morsi’s support, said on Monday that they believed a sufficient numbers of judges had agreed to supervise the polls, ensuring that the vote could go forward.
