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Voters in Egypt went to the polling stations on Sunday to cast their votes in the presidential elections in which 4 candidates are competing, most notably the current president. Abdel Fattah Sisi Who is preparing for a third term.
67 million Egyptians are entitled to participate in the elections from today until the day after tomorrow, Tuesday, and offices will be open for voting between nine in the morning and nine in the evening, local time, with the official results being announced on December 18, if they are decided in the first round. Another vote is planned for next January in the event of a repeat election.
In addition to Sisi (68 years old), three candidates are running in the elections: Farid Zahran, head of the Egyptian Democratic Party, Abdel-Sanad Yamama from the Wafd Party, and Hazem Omar from the Republican People’s Party.
Two members of the opposition tried to run in the elections, to no avail. One of them, liberal publisher Hisham Qasim, is currently in prison. The other, former opposition MP Ahmed Tantawi, stopped his bid to run for office last October, saying that officials and thugs targeted his supporters, accusations that were denied by the National Elections Authority. Tantawi faces trial on charges of “circulating papers related to the elections without the permission of the authorities.”
The government media authority described the elections as a step towards political pluralism, while critics see them as a sham election after a 10-year campaign of suppression of the opposition.
Thousands of political prisoners are behind bars, and 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.”
Economic challenges
The elections come under difficult economic conditions, with an inflation rate approaching 40% and a local currency that has lost 50% of its value, which led to price fluctuations. It also coincides with the continuation of the Israeli war on… Gaza strip And the consequences it has for Cairo.
Al-Sisi, the Minister of Defense and former army commander, came to power after ousting former President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. In the 2014 and 2018 elections, Al-Sisi won more than 96% of the votes.
After that, he introduced a constitutional amendment so that his second term would be 6 years instead of 4, so that he could run for a third term. The participation rate reached 41.5% in 2018, 6 points lower than in the previous elections.
