Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Shaimaa Khalil: "Morsi attempting to assert control" 
 
 Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has ordered the military to maintain security and protect state institutions in the run-up to a controversial referendum on a new constitution. 
 
 The army has also been given the power to arrest civilians. 
 
 Mr Morsi has tried to calm public anger by annulling a decree giving him huge powers, but rejected a call to scrap the 15 December constitutional vote. 
 
 Opposition leaders called for protests on Tuesday against the referendum. 
 
 The opposition was "not aiming at toppling the president" but wanted a better constitution, former Foreign Minister Amr Moussa told the BBC. 
 
 Islamist groups have said they will hold counter demonstrations, raising fears of further bloody clashes on the streets of the Egyptian capital. 
 
 Egypt's crisis 22 Nov: Presidential decree gives Mr Morsi sweeping new powers 
 
 Presidential decree gives Mr Morsi sweeping new powers 30 Nov: Islamist-dominated constituent assembly adopts draft constitution 
 
 Islamist-dominated constituent assembly adopts draft constitution 1 Dec: Mr Morsi sets 15 December as date for constitutional referendum 
 
 Mr Morsi sets 15 December as date for constitutional referendum 2 Dec: Judges go on strike 
 
 Judges go on strike 5 Dec: Clashes outside presidential palace 
 
 Clashes outside presidential palace 7 Dec: Protesters breach palace cordon 
 
 Protesters breach palace cordon 8 Dec: Mr Morsi rescinds his presidential decree but remains firm on referendum 
 
 In another apparent concession, the president suspended a big tax increase on the sale of a variety of goods including soft drinks, cigarettes and beer. 
 
 The decision was carried in a statement that appeared on Mr Morsi's Facebook page in the early hours of Monday, state-owned al-Ahram newspaper reported. 
 
 Weakened police 
 
 As tension increased before Saturday's referendum, Mr Morsi ordered the military to maintain security "up to the announcement of the results from the referendum", AFP news agency reports. 
 
 The BBC's Jon Leyne in Cairo says the step will raise fears that Egypt is moving back towards military rule. 
 
 Under the new presidential decree, the military is asked to co-ordinate with the police on maintaining security and is also entitled to arrest civilians. 
 
 The police have been seen as weakened since the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak and failed to intervene when anti-Muslim Brotherhood protesters ransacked the Islamist movement's Cairo headquarters last week, correspondents say. 
 
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 An increased military presence was visible on Monday close to the presidential palace, which has been the focus of opposition demonstrations. The army has sealed off the area with concrete blocks. 
 
 It is not yet clear whether the opposition will boycott Saturday's referendum. However, a group of senior judges announced on Monday that they would be prepared to oversee the vote, on certain conditions. 
 
 Votes in Egypt are traditionally supervised by the judiciary but the 22 November presidential decree led thousands of judges to go on strike. 
 
 Now, with the decree rescinded, the State Council Judges' Club has agreed to oversee the vote as long as pro-Morsi supporters call a halt to a sit-in outside Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court. 
 
 The court suspended work on 2 December, citing "psychological pressure" from Islamists who had prevented a meeting on a draft of the new constitution. The protesters had wanted to block a ruling on the legality of the document. 
 
 'Division and sedition' 
 
 The opposition argues that the constitution was drafted by an assembly dominated by Mohammed Morsi's Islamist allies. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Nobel peace laureate and founder of the Constitution Party, Mohamed ElBaradei: "The whole process is hostage to religious institution rather than judiciary" 
 
 In a statement after talks on Sunday, the opposition National Salvation Front said it would not recognise the draft constitution "because it does not represent the Egyptian people". 
 
 "We reject the referendum which will certainly lead to more division and sedition," spokesman Sameh Ashour said. 
 
 In a BBC interview, one of the Front's main leaders, Amr Moussa, insisted they were not "aiming at doing anything that would lead to the disintegration of the state". 
 
 "Why should we make the people swallow a constitution that could have been much better and should have been much better?" 
 
 On Sunday, hundreds of opposition protesters protested against the referendum outside the presidential palace. 
 
 Analysis Many Egyptians are furious that their lives have not got better since the revolution. They point to a lack of reform, with no economic progress, no attempt to cleanse the notoriously brutal and corrupt police force, let alone any success in sorting out Egypt's many other problems, such as the piles of rubbish on the streets, the terrible traffic, and the filthy and polluted environment. As for President Morsi, he is fighting a battle on two fronts. While many opponents object to the Islamic tendencies in the new constitution, he is also under enormous pressure not to give ground to the liberals. No easy way out of Egypt crisis 
 
 They chanted anti-Muslim Brotherhood slogans and held up banners reading slogans such as "Morsi, hold back your thugs" and "The people demand the fall of the regime". 
 
 But Mohamed Soudan, foreign relations secretary of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, said Mr Morsi was constitutionally bound to go ahead with the vote because the date had been announced by the constituent assembly. 
 
 The president says he is trying to safeguard the revolution that overthrew Hosni Mubarak last year, but his critics accuse him of acting like a dictator. 
 
 Mr Morsi's decree of 22 November stripped the judiciary of any right to challenge his decisions and triggered violent protests. 
 
 Although the decree has been annulled, some decisions taken under it still stand. 
 
 The general prosecutor, who was dismissed, will not be reinstated, and the retrial of former regime officials will go ahead. ||||| Photo Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 CAIRO — The political crisis over Egypt’s draft constitution hardened on both sides on Sunday, as President Mohamed Morsi prepared to deploy the army to safeguard balloting in a planned referendum on the new charter and his opponents called for more protests and a boycott to undermine the vote. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Thousands of demonstrators streamed toward the presidential palace for a fifth night of protests against Mr. Morsi and the proposed charter, and the president, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, formally issued an order asking the military to protect such “vital institutions” and to secure the vote. 
 
 With the decision to boycott the referendum, the opposition signaled that it had given up hope that it could defeat the draft charter at the polls, and had opted instead to try to undermine the referendum’s legitimacy. 
 
 The call for new protests — with major demonstrations expected at the presidential palace again on Tuesday and Friday — ensures that questions about Egypt’s national unity and stability will continue to overshadow debate about the specific contents of the charter. Although international experts who have studied the draft say it is hardly more religious than Egypt’s old constitution, opponents say it fails to adequately protect individual rights from being constricted by a future Islamist majority in Parliament. 
 
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 Over the past two weeks, hundreds of thousands of people have poured into the streets to oppose the charter, crowds have attacked 28 Muslim Brotherhood offices and the group’s headquarters, and at least seven people have died in clashes between Islamist and secular political factions. 
 
 The opposition “rejects lending legitimacy to a referendum that will definitely lead to more sedition and division,” said Sameh Ashour, a spokesman for a coalition that calls itself the National Salvation Front. Holding a referendum “in a state of seething and chaos,” Mr. Ashour said, amounted to “a reckless and flagrant absence of responsibility, risking driving the country into violent confrontations that endanger its national security.” 
 
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 Whether to ask voters to vote no or to stay home has been the subject of heated debate in opposition circles in the week since Mr. Morsi announced the referendum, to be held on Saturday. 
 
 Now the question is whether opponents can translate the energy of the protests against the charter into more votes and seats in parliamentary elections that are expected to take place two months after the referendum. 
 
 Both sides acknowledge that President Morsi, who belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party, has hurt himself and his party politically with the act that first touched off the protests: a decree giving himself authoritarian powers and putting his decisions above the reach of judicial review until the new charter is passed. He suffered even more, they say, when the backlash against the decree and the new constitution led to a night of clashes between his Islamists supporters and their more secular opponents that left at least six dead and hundreds more injured. 
 
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 Mr. Morsi surprised his critics after midnight on Sunday by withdrawing almost all the provisions of his decree, a step he said he took on the recommendation of about 40 politicians and thinkers he convened on Saturday for a “national dialogue” meant to resolve the crisis. Leading opposition figures were invited to take part, but nearly all declined; according to a list broadcast on state television, most of the attendees were Islamists of various stripes, and the only prominent secular politician on hand was the former presidential candidate Ayman Nour. 
 
 A spokesman for the group said at an authorized news conference that Mr. Morsi was issuing a new, more limited decree, giving immunity from judicial scrutiny only to his “constitutional declarations,” a narrow if hazily defined category of presidential actions. Steps he took under the previous decree would also be protected, including dismissal of the public prosecutor, who was appointed under the ousted former president, Hosni Mubarak. 
 
 Through the spokesman for the “national dialogue” group, Mohamed Salim el-Awa, Mr. Morsi even signaled a willingness to allow his opponents and allies to negotiate a package of amendments to the constitution that all sides would agree to enact once the draft is approved. 
 
 But Mr. Morsi did not concede to the opposition’s main demand: to postpone the referendum long enough for an overhaul of the draft. 
 
 Mohamed ElBaradei, the former diplomat who now acts as a coordinator of the secular opposition, was the first to fire back on Sunday, resorting again to the language of revolution. 
 
 “We have broken the barrier of fear: A constitution that aborts our rights and freedoms is one that we will bring down today, before tomorrow,” Mr. ElBaradei wrote in a Twitter posting early on Sunday. “Our power is in our will.” 
 
 As his proposed compromise faded and tensions mounted on Sunday, Mr. Morsi followed through on plans announced the day before to authorize the military to protect national institutions and polling places. His order, printed in the official gazette on Sunday, amounts to a form of martial law, because it will allow soldiers under the direction of the defense minister to arrest civilians under a military code of justice. 
 
 The move indicated that, at least in the short term, Egypt’s powerful military was lining up behind the new Islamist president to complete the transition to a new constitution. Muslim Brotherhood leaders cheered a Defense Ministry spokesman’s televised statement explaining that the army might step in to maintain order for the balloting next Saturday because the spokesman’s wording echoed passages in many of the president’s speeches about the need for Egyptians to come together for the referendum. 
 
 The apparent alliance between the Brotherhood and the military reverses 60 years of mutual hostility, and it is likely to disappoint some Egyptians who fear the Islamists and had begun to whisper that the military might remove Mr. Morsi from power. 
 
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 One person close to Mr. Morsi said the president issued the order so that troops could secure the voting process, as they have done in each of Egypt’s elections since the ouster of Mr. Mubarak. Islamists, including some around Mr. Morsi, have become increasingly distrustful of the Interior Ministry, whose police forces have failed to stop attacks on Muslim Brotherhood offices or vandalism outside the presidential palace. 
 
 But Amr Moussa, a former foreign minister under Mr. Mubarak who is now an opposition leader, said it may have been the military’s idea, not the president’s, to issue the authorization, and with it a veiled warning. “Everybody — all of us in civil society — are getting really disturbed by this very serious situation,” he said. “Everybody is upset, and that extends into the army.” 
 
 After taking office in June, Mr. Morsi spent months courting the generals, sometimes earning the derision of liberal activists for his public flattery of their role. The constitution his supporters eventually drew up included protections of the military’s autonomy and privileges within the Egyptian government, despite the protests of the same activists. 
 
 The “national dialogue” group concluded on Saturday, as Mr. Morsi had, that the constitutional referendum had to be held quickly and could not be delayed. The timing was forced, they said, by an earlier constitutional declaration that was approved by voters in March 2011, a month after Mr. Mubarak’s overthrow, over the objections of the liberals. That referendum also set up the framework for parliamentary elections, which were won handily by Islamist parties and candidates; the Parliament was later dissolved by the country’s constitutional court.
– The opposition's debate on how to handle Mohamed Morsi's scheduled constitutional referendum has been decided: Boycott it. In opting not to push voters to actually show up and vote no on Saturday, the move suggests Morsi's opponents determined they didn't have the votes to squash the charter. By taking the boycott route, they likely hope to erode the vote's validity, the New York Times reports. The opposition "rejects lending legitimacy to a referendum that will definitely lead to more sedition and division," says a spokesman. The proposed constitution isn't actually much more religious than the old one, according to outside experts—but opposition activists say it paves the way for any Islamist parliamentary majority to limit individual rights. More demonstrations are planned for tomorrow and Friday, even as Morsi offered a carrot: He today rolled back a wide-ranging tax increase on items ranging from soda and beer to cigarettes and oil—levies that were announced only yesterday, reports the Financial Times. But then there's the stick: The Egyptian leader has given the army the power to arrest citizens. Troops, who have blocked off areas around the presidential palace with concrete blocks, are set to maintain security until referendum results are announced, the BBC reports.