Protests in Egypt to intensify Friday after a panel rushed through a draft constitution, escalating the political stand-off between President Mohammad Mursi and his opposition

Protests in Egypt to intensify Friday after a panel rushed through a draft constitution, escalating the political stand-off between President Mohammad Mursi and his opposition.
 
Despite people’s protests and opposition from secular opponents since Tuesday, the Muslim Brotherhood drafting Egypt’s new constitution voted Friday to approve a charter that human rights groups and international experts said was full of holes and ambiguities.

A spokesman for former Arab League chief Amr Moussa said the opposition leader would later Friday head a march to Tahrir Square, where activists are staging a sit-in protest against a decree by Mursi granting himself broad powers that shield his decisions from judicial review.
  
Other protest groups are planning their own marches Friday ahead of a mass opposition rally called on Saturday to rival a protest in support of Mursi.
  
A coalition of leading dissident leaders had warned Mursi that a strike by judges could be followed by wide-scale civil disobedience and further protest rallies.

Dismissing the discord, President Mohamed Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, said in a televised interview on Thursday that he expected to call for an almost immediate referendum on the draft constitution to help bring Egypt’s chaotic political transition to a close — “a difficult birth from the womb of an ancient nation.”
  
Tens of thousands of people on Tuesday packed Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicentre of a democratic uprising that overthrew president Hosni Mubarak in early 2011, to demonstrate against Mursi's decree. Dozens have remained in the square since, camping out in tents and vowing to remain until the president rescinds the order.