Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has ruled with an unquestioned grip for the past nine years, won a new six-year term with 89.6 percent of the vote
El-Sissi recorded a landslide victory, securing 89.6% of the vote, the National Election Authority said. Turnout was 66.8% of more than 67 million registered voters.
“The voting percentage is the highest in the history of Egypt,” said authority head Hazem Badawy.
Over 39 million voted for former army chief al-Sisi, who has ruled the most populous Arab county for a decade.
Sisi was running against three other candidates, none of whom were high profile. Voting in Egypt was held over three days on December 10-12.
Runner-up Hazem Omar, who leads the Republican People’s Party, received 4.5 percent of the vote.
Next came Farid Zahran with 4% votes, leader of the left-leaning Egyptian Social Democratic Party, and Abdel-Sanad Yamama chairman of the Wafd party received less then 2% votes.
The election was overshadowed by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza on Egypt’s eastern border, which has threatened to expand into wider regional turmoil.
Al-Sisi’s victory secures his third – and, according to the constitution, final – term in office.
He was first elected president in 2014, and was re-elected in 2018, both times with 97 percent of the vote.
Egypt is in the midst of an economic crisis, with monthly inflation surging above 30%. Over the past 22 months, the Egypt pound has lost 50% of value against the dollar with one third of the country’s 105 million people already living in poverty, according to official figures.
Experts and economists widely agree that the current crisis stems from years of mismanagement and lopsided economy where private firms are squeezed out by state-owned companies. The Egyptian economy has also been hurt by the wider repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine, which rattled the global market.
