EGYPT: PRESIDENT SADATWINS OVERWHELMING VOTE OF CONFIDENCE FOR HIS TOUGH NEW MEASURES TO COMBAT RIOTERS.
Record ID:
328820
EGYPT: PRESIDENT SADATWINS OVERWHELMING VOTE OF CONFIDENCE FOR HIS TOUGH NEW MEASURES TO COMBAT RIOTERS.
- Title: EGYPT: PRESIDENT SADATWINS OVERWHELMING VOTE OF CONFIDENCE FOR HIS TOUGH NEW MEASURES TO COMBAT RIOTERS.
- Date: 11th February 1977
- Summary: 1. EXTERIOR GV: police and troops lining route to polling station. 0.03 2. CU: sign on wall 0.05 3. MV: people queuing outside polling station. 0.06 4. INTERIOR MV: people casting votes with poster of Sadat on wall. (4 shots) 0.43 5. MV: President Sadat enters, greeted by officials and goes behind screen to cast vote. 1.12 6. MV: photographers watch as the President casts his vote. (2 shots) 1.26 7. EXTERIOR MV: Sadat leaves polling station. 1.39 Initials RH/TA/DK/1825 Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 26th February 1977 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: CAIRO, EGYPT
- Country: Egypt
- Reuters ID: LVAEVM4UUPS9G4IIQEC3W644ODAG
- Story Text: In Egypt it was announced on Friday (11 February) that President Anwar Sadat has won a 99.447 per cent vote endorsing the strict law and order measures which were put to a national referendum on Thursday (10 February). The new measures threaten severe penalties for demonstrators, rioters and tax evaders. They follow last month's riots in Cairo in which 79 people died in protests over food price increases.
SYNOPSIS: The semi-official Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram said polling was completed quietly apart from minor incidents. Two university students were arrested in Cairo while distributing pamphlets urging voters to boycott the referendum, but the newspaper said they belonged to a secret communist group and were sought by the police. In Melig, a village in the Nile delta, two members of the leftist Unionist Progressive party were arrested on charges of obstructing the voting - but here in President Sadat's home village of Miet Abu Elkoum, about 50 miles from-Cairo, voting went smoothly and like everywhere else the voters were almost 100 per cent behind the proposals.
President Sadat will naturally take the vote as a confirmation of the electorate's faith in him. But what will probable Please him most about the results is ??? the high turn out of 96.7 per cent, because some of the small opposition movements had tried to persuade voters to boycott the referendum. They were clearly unsuccessful.
The small Unionist Progressive party, formed last year, was the only one to urge voters to vote 'no' in the referendum. The only area of doubt which remains for President Sadat now is that the actual number of voters on the electorate is well short of those eligible. Egypt has a population of 40 million, but only 9.6 million voters are registered.
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