CAIRO: Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has won a third term with 89.6 per cent of the vote in the Arab world’s most populous nation, the national election authority said on Monday.
The outcome of the Dec 10-12 poll was widely expected after the former army chief with a fondness for infrastructure mega-projects campaigned against a small field of relative unknowns.
It secures 69-year-old Sisi his third and, according to the Egyptian constitution, final term in office, starting in April and set to run for six years. His victory comes despite a painful economic crisis, marked by a currency plunge and runaway household prices, and heightened regional tensions.
Annual inflation is running at 36.4pc, sending up prices of some food staples by the week and hurting household budgets in the country 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 Sisi, Egypt’s fifth president to emerge from within the ranks of the military since 1952.
It was the third time in a decade Sisi wins a landslide victory, albeit with his smallest margin. In both 2014 and 2018, Sisi won over 96pc of the vote.
The runner-up Hazem Omar, who leads the Republican People’s Party, received 4.5pc of the vote. Next came Farid Zahran, leader of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, and Abdel-Sanad Yamama from the Wafd, a century-old but relatively marginal party.
Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2023
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