CAIRO, Sept 9: Incumbent Hosni Mubarak has swept to victory in Egypt’s first contested presidential poll, with more than 88 per cent of the vote, but with less than one-quarter of voters turning out and opponents charging the results were rigged. Official results announced by presidential election commission chairman Mamduh Marai gave the 77-year-old leader a whopping 88.5 percent of the vote in Wednesday’s election and put the turnout at 23 percent.

Ghad party leader Ayman Nur clinched second place with a paltry seven percent but challenged the results.

He said estimates based on his party representatives’ exit polls and assessments by judges manning the polling stations gave him between 30 and 38 percent of the vote.

“This is a fraud aimed at eliminating the only candidate who will still be alive for the 2011 presidential election,” the 40-year-old lawyer, by far the youngest candidate, said.

He said earlier that had he filed a new complaint with the electoral commission after his first appeal demanding a re-run was rejected.

Wafd party chairman Numan Gumaa, who came third with around three percent, also accused the regime of having tampered with the results.

Mr Mubarak was last re-elected in 1999 with 93 percent of the vote but it was under a referendum system where Egyptians could only say yes or no to a single candidate nominated by parliament.

A victory for Mr Mubarak was a foregone conclusion but the turnout figure was always seen as key to his future legitimacy.

Although estimates put the turnout for previous elections below 10 percent, Friday’s announcement silenced critics who predicted the regime would seek to hike the figure to 50 percent.—AFP