CAIRO: Egyptians flocked to the polls Saturday for the first time since president Hosni Mubarak was toppled to vote in a referendum on political reform marred by an attack on presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei. Youths pushed and hurled missiles at the former head of the UN nuclear watchdog as he tried to vote in the constitutional referendum which will determine how quickly Egypt can hold elections. “We don't want you, we don't want you,” chanted the crowd of about 60, many of them teenagers. “I went to vote with my family and I was attacked by organized thugs,” ElBaradei wrote on Twitter. “Top figures of Mubarak's regime still at large and undermining the revolution,” he said. Rocks thrown at ElBaradei's car smashed its rear window as he fled the crowd, a Reuters witness said. He was unable to vote at the Cairo polling station and went elsewhere to cast his ballot. Observers said there appeared to have been an unprecedented turnout for the first Egyptian ballot in living memory whose outcome was not known in advance. Voters were being asked to approve or reject proposed reforms drafted by a judicial committee appointed by the country's military rulers, who have pledged to hold early elections. “It is too early to tell what the voter turnout is, but it is clear that this is unprecedented,” Ahmed Samih Farag, a human rights activist and monitor with the Egyptian Coalition for Election Monitoring, told Reuters, surveying queues of voters. The Muslim Brotherhood has backed the amendments, setting it at odds with secular groups and reform advocates including ElBaradei and Arab League chief Amr Moussa, who is also a presidential candidate. Remnants of Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP) have also said they support the amendments. Constitutional reform is a milestone on the path sketched by the military toward legislative and presidential elections that will allow it to hand power to a civilian, elected government. The result is expected to be announced Sunday evening or Monday morning.
