Polling stations opened at nine in the morning (07:00 GMT) in Egypt for presidential elections taking place over three days, and the results appear to be settled in terms of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi winning a third term, according to Agence France-Presse.
Voters in Egypt have begun casting their votes in the presidential elections, and voting takes place during the three days from nine in the morning until nine in the evening (07:00-19:00 GMT).
67 million Egyptians were called to cast their votes, on Sunday, in presidential elections, with the economic problem at the top of concerns in a country facing the largest economic crisis in its history, with an inflation rate touching 40 percent and a local currency that lost 50 percent of its value, which led to price spiraling. 60 percent of Egypt’s population, approximately 106 million people, lives around the poverty line.
Voting will take place on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, with official results announced on December 18.
These elections do not arouse enthusiasm among Egyptians after the war between Israel and Hamas in the neighboring Gaza Strip cast a shadow over the election campaign that was held in November.
Evening television programs on local channels close to the Egyptian intelligence services are now trying to link the elections with the war in Gaza, according to Agence France-Presse.
The program presenter on Sada El Balad channel, Ahmed Moussa, said: “There are two million (in Gaza) who want to enter (our country)… We cannot be content with watching… We must go out (to participate in the elections) and say no to displacement.”
In addition to Sisi, three candidates are running in the elections: Farid Zahran, head of the Egyptian Democratic Party (center-left), Abdel-Sanad Yamamiya, from the long-established liberal Wafd Party, which has now become marginal, and Hazem Omar, from the Republican Popular Party.
The latter seemed to be the most convincing in a single television debate in which all the candidates participated except for Sisi, who sent a member of his campaign on his behalf, according to what Agence France-Presse reported.
Two members of the opposition tried to run in the elections, to no avail. One of them, the liberal publisher, Hisham Qasim, is currently in prison. As for the other, former opposition MP Ahmed Al-Tantawi, his trial began on charges of “circulating papers related to the elections without the permission of the authorities.”
Al-Sisi, the Minister of Defense and former army commander, came to power after overthrowing the late President, Mohamed Morsi, in July 2013. In the 2014 and 2018 elections, Al-Sisi won more than 96 percent of the votes.
After that, he introduced a constitutional amendment so that his second term became six years instead of four, so that he could run for a third term.
In this context, attention turns to the participation rate, which reached 41.5 percent in 2018, six points lower than in the previous elections.
Egypt’s external debt has tripled in recent years, and the major projects implemented by the state, whose implementation is often entrusted to the army, have not generated the expected returns.
Thousands of political prisoners are behind bars in Egypt. The Presidential Pardon Commission released nearly a thousand of them over the course of a year, but human rights organizations confirm that “three times this number were arrested during the same period.”
2023-12-10 05:27:39
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