Former army chief Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi has won a landslide victory in Egypt’s presidential election with 96.9 per cent of the valid ballots, unofficial results showed Thursday.
His only challenger, leftist politician Hamdeen Sabahy, conceded defeat and vowed to respect the result, although he cast doubt on the reported turnout of almost half the electorate.
Al-Sissi, who has been lionized in the media since he ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi last year, won 23.9 million ballots, according to the independent newspaper al-Masry al-Youm. Sabahy gained only 754,757 votes, or 3.1 per cent of the valid votes, while there were 1.28 million spoiled votes, the newspaper said.
Despite media reporting a low turnout at many polling stations, especially on the second and third day of voting, the paper reported that turnout was 47.7 per cent.
Authorities were anxious for a high showing at the polls to secure local and international legitimacy for al-Sissi. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood had hailed reports of a empty polling stations as a moral victory.
The reported turnout is below the nearly 52 per cent registered in the 2012 presidential polls won by Morsi, but al-Sissi’s overwhelming victory means that his own votes nevertheless far outstrip Morsi’s 13.2 million votes in the much tighter 2012 contest.
Private television channels supportive of al-Sissi had warned of the dangers of a low turn-out, while officials repeatedly referred to the 500 pound (70 dollar) fine for non-participation and the electoral commission extended voting to an unscheduled third day hours before polls were due to close.
Sabahy, addressing supporters and journalists in his campaign headquarters, said that “I respect Egyptians’ choice and admit my loss.” “We have lost a round, but I am sure we’ll ultimately win in fulfilling the people’s dream of bread, freedom and social justice,” he said. But, he said, “we give no credibility to the figures that have been announced about the level of participation.” International monitors said they had seen no evidence of ballot-stuffing or falsication, but an expert on Egyptian politics has said that with observers thin on the ground, the credibility of turn-out figures could not be assured.
“We’re not going to have really reliable figures,” Nathan Brown, a professor at George Washington University in the United States, told media on the eve of the count. “The regime will be able to produce their own figures which may convince their own supporters,” he said. International monitors offered mixed appraisals of the election, with the European Union’s observer mission saying overall conduct of the voting was “‘good’ or ‘very good’ … despite minor procedural violations.”
But it expressed concern about the political environment, saying there was “limited space for dissenting voices.” A US-based monitoring group passed a harsher judgement, saying, “Egypt’s repressive political environment made a genuinely democratic presidential election impossible.” “The Egyptian government should take immediate action to open political space and put an end to the political exclusion and intimidation that have characterized this process,” said Eric Bjornlund, president of Democracy International.
Al-Sissi, 59, soared in popularity after the July overthrow of Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected president. His supporters see him as able to end the turmoil and economic decline that have wracked Egypt over the past three years since the Arab Spring protests and ouster of longtime leader Hosny Mubarak.
A road map that interim President Adly Mansour set out after Morsi’s ouster has been backed by religious leaders and liberal parties as putting Egypt on the path to democracy and stability. Mansour hailed the successful completion of voting, saying, “Egyptians have proven that they are committed to protecting their hard-fought freedoms, including the right to determine who will lead this great nation at this critical time.”
But rights groups and some opposition figures have criticized an ongoing crackdown that has seen Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood banned as a terrorist organization and more than a thousand people killed in the dispersal of protests. About 41,000 people, many of them Islamists but also including prominent secular activists, have been detained or prosecuted since Morsi’s ouster, according to data compiled by the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights.
Source : Sapa-dpa /kd
