This Sunday, Egyptians began three days of voting for the presidential elections, in which the current head of state, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, appears as a favorite to win a third six-year term.
Al Sisi was one of the first to vote at the inauguration of the Nustafa Emerira polling station, in the Masr al Jadida neighborhood, in the east of Cairo, according to the Spanish agency EFE, which cites state television.
More than 67 million Egyptians, out of a total of 105 million inhabitants of the African country, are expected to go to the polls during the three days of voting.
Voting ends each day at 9:00 p.m. local time (7:00 p.m. in Lisbon) and the results are expected to be announced on December 18.
Al-Sisi’s opponents are Farid Zahran, leader of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party (PES), Abdel Sanad Yamama, president of the Wafd Party, and Hazem Omar, of the Republican People’s Party (RPP).
Despite Egypt’s difficulties, serious opposition does not appear likely under the “iron-fisted” regime of Al-Sisi, the fifth president to emerge from the ranks of the army since 1962, according to AFP.
Thousands of opponents were detained, and although the presidential pardons committee released a thousand people over the course of a year, “three times as many people” were arrested in the same period, according to local non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Far from exciting the crowds, the presidential campaign took place in November marked by the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which monopolizes the attention of the media and public opinion.
Egypt has a border with Gaza, the Rafah post in the Sinai Peninsula, which has been used to bring some humanitarian aid to the 2.3 million residents of the Hamas-controlled enclave.
This is the third election since Al-Sisi assumed leadership of Egypt after the 2013 coup that overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood government, led by Islamist Mohamed Morsi.
Al-Sisi won the two previous elections, in 2014 and 2018, with more than 96% of the votes.
Since then, he extended the presidential term from four to six years and amended the Constitution to extend the limit from two to three consecutive presidential terms.
In this context, the focus will be on electoral participation. In the last presidential elections, the participation rate was 41.5%, six points less than in the previous elections.
The elections take place in the midst of one of the worst economic crises in a country with two-thirds of the population living below or slightly above the poverty line.
Inflation currently stands at 40%, the 50% currency devaluation has driven up the prices of goods in recent months and the recent bonuses and increases announced by the president for civil servants and pensioners have had little effect.
Source: TSF
