THE Vice President said yesterday amendments to disputed articles of the draft constitution could be agreed with the opposition ahead of a December 15 referendum and put in writing, and he called for dialogue with opponents to end the crisis. "There must be consensus," Mahmoud Mekky told a news conference. “I expect dialogue to begin soon," he said, adding the demands of opposition protesters must be respected. "There is real political will to pass the current period and respond to the demands of the public," Mekky said. "(We) could ... agree from now on amendments in a written document before the referendum," Mekky said. He described the proposal as his own idea. According to his plan, all parties would respect the document until new parliamentary elections that are expected early next year. At that point, parliament would initiate steps towards a formal amendment of the constitution. Mekky called for "communication between political forces" on the document. He said the referendum would go ahead on time. Mekky's call came after supporters and opponents of President Mohamed Morsi scuffled yesterday outside the presidential palace in Cairo, hurling stones and other objects at each other. The president's backers tore down tents erected by opponents of Morsi who began a sit-in on Tuesday against the president's expanded powers and his decision to race through a new constitution they said did not represent the whole nation. Morsi returned to work yesterday a day after slipping out of his palace when it came under siege from protesters, furious at his drive to push through a new constitution after temporarily expanding his own powers. The Health Ministry said 35 protesters were wounded and the Interior Ministry said 40 policemen were hurt in clashes around the presidential palace on Tuesday. While they fired tear gas when protesters breached barricades to reach the palace walls, riot police appeared to handle the disturbance with restraint. A presidential source said Morsi was back in his office even though up to 200 demonstrators had camped out near one entrance to the palace in the northeast Cairo district of Heliopolis overnight. Traffic was flowing normally in the area where thousands of people had protested the night before, and riot police had been withdrawn, a witness said. The rest of Cairo was calm, despite the political furore over Morsi's November 22 decree handing himself wide powers and shielding his decisions from judicial oversight. Morsi says he acted to prevent courts from derailing a newly drafted constitution that will go to a referendum on Dec 15, after which Morsi's decree will lapse. "Our demands from the president: Retract the presidential decree and cancel the referendum on the constitution," read a placard hung by demonstrators on a palace gate. The crowds had gathered in what organisers had dubbed the "Last Warning" to Morsi. "The people want the downfall of the regime!" they chanted, roaring the signature slogan of last year's uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak. But the "Last Warning" may turn out to be one of the last gasps for a disparate opposition which has little chance of stopping next week's vote on a constitution drafted over six months and swiftly approved by an Islamist-dominated assembly. Facing the gravest crisis of his six-month-old tenure, Morsi has shown no sign of buckling under pressure, confident that the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies can win the referendum and a parliamentary election to follow. Many Egyptians yearn for an end to political upheaval that has scared off investors and tourists, worsening an economic crisis. Dozens of pro-Morsi demonstrators, watched by equal numbers of police, waved flags outside the Supreme Constitutional Court, whose rulings have complicated the Islamists' rise to power. "You are not a political agency," read one banner held by the demonstrators, addressing a court that in June ordered the dissolution of the Islamist-led lower house of parliament. Morsi issued his Nov 22 decree temporarily putting his actions above the law to forestall any court ruling to dissolve the upper house or the assembly that wrote the constitution. Now that the document has been approved and preparations for the referendum are underway, it is not clear whether the president might roll back his decree as a sop to the opposition. State institutions, with the partial exception of the judiciary, have mostly fallen in behind Morsi, who emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood to win a free election in June.
