Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi has won a third term with 89.6 percent of the vote in the Arab world’s most populous nation, the national election authority said on Monday.
The outcome of the Dec. 10 to12 poll was widely expected after the former army chief with a fondness for infrastructure projects campaigned against a small field of relative unknowns.
It secures 69-year-old al-Sisi his third and, according to the Egyptian constitution, final term in office, starting in April and set to run for six years.
Photo: EPA-EFE
His victory comes despite a painful economic crisis, marked by a currency plunge and runaway retail prices, and heightened regional tensions sparked by the Israel-Hamas war in neighboring Gaza.
Annual inflation is running at 6.4 percent, sending up prices of some food staples by the week and hurting household budgets in the nation of nearly 106 million.
Even before the current economic crisis, about two-thirds of Egypt’s population were living on or below the poverty line.
A decade-long crackdown on dissent had eliminated any serious competition for al-Sisi, Egypt’s fifth president to emerge from within the ranks of the military since 1952.
It was the third time in a decade al-Sisi won a landslide victory, albeit with his smallest margin. In both 2014 and 2018, al-Sisi won more than 96 percent of the vote.
The runner-up Hazem Omar, who leads the Republican People’s Party, received 4.5 percent of the vote. Next came Farid Zahran, leader of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, and Abdel-Sanad Yamama from Wafd, a century-old, but relatively marginal party.
The election authority said turnout was “unprecedented” at 66.8 percent of 67 million registered voters. That was up from 41 percent in 2018 and 47 percent in 2014.
However, in much of Cairo the only sign Egypt was holding an election were the ubiquitous campaign posters for al-Sisi, while banners for other candidates were few and far between.
Several voters said that they “did not know the other candidates,” while much of the nation ignored the polls entirely.
Al-Sisi, a retired army field marshall, was first voted in as president after leading the overthrow of elected Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.
He later extended the presidential mandate from four to six years and amended the constitution to raise the limit on consecutive terms from two to three years.
His administration has overseen the imprisonment of tens of thousands of political opponents as the space for dissent has been progressively curtailed.
The all-but-decimated opposition had built some momentum this year ahead of the election, before media and public attention were diverted by the war in Gaza.
For a brief while, some expected the election to include two main opposition figures who — despite having no real hope of winning — were intended to highlight dissident voices.
Today, one is in prison and the other is awaiting trial.
When he was first elected, the president’s popularity was dubbed “Sisimania” and adoring supporters put his image on everything from baked goods to key chains.
The enthusiasm has ebbed from those highs, but al-Sisi is not without his supporters.
From 2016 onward, he undertook a host of economic reforms in pursuit of loans from the IMF that have required severe austerity measures and multiple currency devaluations.
Those policies, coupled with expensive infrastructure projects — including a US$58 billion new capital city in the desert east of Cairo — have more than tripled Egypt’s debt.
Virtually all imports to Egypt are paid for in US dollars, and a severe foreign currency shortage has caused a parallel market to surge and pushed up retail prices.
Nearly a decade after al-Sisi first promised Egyptians security and prosperity, the economy is in free fall.
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