CAIRO: Egyptian judges refused to oversee a referendum due in less than two weeks on a controversial new constitution drafted by an Islamist-dominated panel, sharply upping the stakes of a standoff with the Islamist president.

The announcement by the Judges Club, which represents judges na-tionwide, came after Egypt’s top court began an open-ended strike in the face of a mass protest outside the courthouse by supporters of Presi-dent Mohamed Morsi opposed to their ruling on the legality of the panel that drew up the draft charter.

Judges traditionally supervise elections in Egypt, giving them a seal of legitimacy, but they have been openly at loggerheads with Morsi since he issued a decree last month placing both his decisions and the charter panel beyond their scrutiny.

The standoff has polarized Egyp-tian opinion and sparked the biggest political crisis, since Morsi assumed power in June as the country’s first ever civilian president and its first elected leader since the overthrow of veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak in a popular uprising early last year.

The charter, adopted by the panel on Friday in the face of a boycott by liberals and Christians, has been criticized for paving the way to a strict interpretation of Islamic law and for failing to secure key rights.

It is due to be put to a referendum on December 15 under an acce-lerated timetable for a transition to a new political system being cham-pioned by Morsi and his Islamist backers in what they say is an effort to turn the page on the turmoil since Mu-barak’s overthrow.

A judicial boycott of the referendum could further cast doubt on its legitimacy as the opposition prepares to escalate protests against the charter and Morsi’s adoption of sweeping powers that critics des-cribe as dictatorial.

Morsi’s supporters accused the judges of being elitist holdouts from the Mubarak era and of standing in the way of public support for the Islamists expressed in repeated votes since the strongman’s ouster early last year.

A senior Islamist who helped draft the new constitution attacked the constitutional court as “highly politicized” and said that liberal opponents had been unwilling to compromise on the charter.

Amr Darrag of the Freedom and Justice Party, political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, insisted that “the amount of freedoms in terms of rights and freedoms for people, for minorities . . . are unprecedented in this constitution.”

He also said that women were gua-ranteed equal rights by the charter, adding that the constitution’s role was not to change culture.

Hundreds of thousands of Isla-mist protesters gathered on Saturday in support of Morsi, his sweeping powers and the draft constitution, a day after crowds thronged to Cairo’s Tahrir Square to denounce his “dictatorial” decree.

The Supreme Constitutional Court said it would “suspend work for an indefinite period . . . and until there is no more psychological and material pressure.”

Hundreds of pro-Morsi demons-trators blocked off a main road that runs along the Nile to the court-house and surrounded entrances to its precincts.

The judges responded by calling an “administrative delay” to Sunday’s session, prompting the protesters to head home from the courthouse.

A ruling by the court on Sunday would have defied Morsi’s presi-dential decree that barred any judicial body from dissolving the constituent assembly.