Egypt dials back political reform

Meanwhile, regimes like Egypt's are making changes that amount to a more sophisticated version of the closed politics they've long enjoyed.

The amendments "constitute an effort by the Egyptian regime to increase the appearance of greater balance among the branches of government and of greater opportunities for political parties, while in fact limiting real competition strictly and keeping power concentrated in the hands of the executive branch and the ruling party,'' Nathan Brown, Michele Dunne and Amr Hamzawy wrote in a note for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

In Egypt's last elections, vote-buying and intimidation were widespread. The organization that represents the judges has urged a boycott of Monday's referendum.

Also among the amendments are stipulations that effectively enshrine in the constitution the aspects of the emergency law most hated by democracy activists. The law was ushered in, in 1981, after the assassination of then-President Anwar Sadat. It allows indefinite detention without trial and broad search-and-seizure powers that activists say have been used to intimidate opponents. But the law was subject to periodic renewal; now, the state will have many of those rights in perpetuity.

"The main problems lie in constitutionalizing the emergency laws, which gives the security apparatus leeway to crack [down] on the opposition as well as on individual rights whenever they feel like it," says Mohammed Waked, an activist with the Kifaya [Enough] movement, which has had numerous activists arrested for calling for the end of Mubarak's regime. "The amendments also ... relegate political participation to the space occupied by official parties that are blessed by the regime and the security and have no popular base."

Mubarak and his aides have vigorously defended the changes as steps toward greater democracy. Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, addressing Rice's disappointment, told reporters that "nobody else has the right to say anything,'' and that the changes were needed to protect Egypt from "extremists" and "radicals."

But the State Department's own human rights review of Egypt last week found that arbitrary detention, torture, and impunity for officials are common and showed little improvement last year.

Activists like Mr. Waked say that the government's pursuit of stability could end up having the opposite effect. He says the "nonconfrontational" approach of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood is failing.

"The opposition will learn, I think, the futility of their mild reformist strategies," he says. "They will either move outside the system and adopt strategies that are more confrontational or they will die and leave the space to other forces that would be willing to do so."

– Sameh Naquib contributed to this report.

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