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The build-up to Egypt’s first post-revolutionary constitutional referendum has been fraught with controversy. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) was first accused by some of hijacking the democratic reformist spirit of the uprising by appointing a panel of (unrepresentative and conservative) Constitutional experts to amend the constitution instead of allowing the formation of a Constitutional Assembly which would re-write Egypt’s Constitution from scratch. The amendments, pushed through in what many feared would be a rushed process lasting only ten years, were criticized for retaining some of the old Constitution’s restrictions (e.g. Art. 2’s specification that the president must be a Muslim male).