Egypt’s Al-Sisi in landslide victory

CAIRO. — Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi is Egypt’s new president after securing a landslide victory of over 96 percent of the valid votes, with over 23 million voters casting their ballots for him, according to an unofficial vote count as of early yesterday. Al-Sisi’s only contender, leftist Hamdeen Sabahi, garnered 3.5 percent, with less than 800 000 votes.

The turnout was around 47 percent.
A surprise in the 2014 presidential race was the number of invalidated votes — exceeding 1 million – which prompted jokes on social media that Sabahi and the spoilt ballots were competing for second place in the election.

Although the results are announced by the judges supervising polling centres across the country, they are still considered unofficial as they must be verified and then announced by the Presidential Elections Commission (PEC), the judicial body overseeing the poll.

Judge Tarek Shebl, a member of the PEC’s general secretariat, told Al-Ahram’s Arabic news website early yesterday that the official results will be announced either June 1 or 2.

El-Sisi’s victory had long been predicted.
The presidential election was the second since the January 25, 2011 revolution that led to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.

In 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi won in a runoff with 52 percent, with just over 13 million votes. The turnout was 51 percent.
This was the first foreign-monitored election in Egypt’s history.

The European Union had 150 monitors across Egypt, which the EU said maintained their impartiality, neither legitimising the Egyptian electoral process nor validating the election results.

The African Union and the Arab League are also observing the elections. — Ahram Online.