Egypt presidential election: El-Sissi wins with 89.6 pc of the votes

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah elSissi who has ruled with an unquestioned grip for the past nine years won reelection to a third sixyear term in office election authorities announced Monday He ran against three virtually unknown opponentsElSissi recorded a landslide victory securing 89637 of the vote the National Election Authority said Turnout was 66837 of more than 67 million registered votersThe voting percentage is the highest in the history of Egypt declared Hazem Badawy the election commission chief who announced the official results in a televised news conferenceThe vote was overshadowed by the IsraelHamas war in Gaza on Egypts eastern border which has threatened to expand into wider regional turmoilThe North African country is also in the midst of an economic crisis with monthly inflation surging above 3037 Over the past 22 months the Egypt pound has lost 5037 of value against the dollar with one third of the countrys 105 million people already living in poverty according to official figuresA key Western ally in the region elSissi has faced international criticism over Egypts human rights record and harsh crackdown on dissent A career army officer elSissi as defense minister led the 2013 military overthrow of an elected but divisive Islamist president amid widespread street protests against his oneyear ruleElSissi was first elected as president in mid2014 then reelected in 2018 A year later constitutional amendments passed in a general referendum added two years to elSissis second term and allowed him to run for a third sixyear termHis victory in the latest election was widely deemed a foregone conclusion His three opponents were marginal political figures who were rarely seen during the election campaignHazem Omar head of the Republican Peoples Party came second with 4537 of the vote followed by Farid Zahran head of the opposition Social Democratic Party with 437 AbdelSanad Yamama chairman of the Wafd Party received less than 237 of the voteAn ambitious young presidential hopeful Ahmed Altantawy dropped out of the race after he failed to secure the required signatures from residents to secure his candidacy He was considered elSissis most credible opposition figure and said that harassment from security agencies against his campaign staff and supporters prevented him from reaching the vote threshold for candidacyIn the months prior to the election elSissi vowed to address the countrys ailing economy without offering specificsExperts and economists widely agree that the current crisis stems from years of mismanagement and lopsided economy where private firms are squeezed out by stateowned companies The Egyptian economy has also been hurt by the wider repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine which rattled the global marketElSissis government initiated an ambitious IMFbacked reform program in 2016 but the austerity measures sent prices soaring exacting a heavy toll on ordinary EgyptiansLast December the government secured a second IMF deal on the promise of implementing economic reforms including a floating exchange rate The coast of basic goods have since jumped particularly importsTimothy Kaldas deputy director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington said a quick fix to Egypts economy is highly unlikelyInflation will remain high and investors weary he said Without inclusive growth and investment Egypt will never reach a stable footingUnder elSissis watch thousands of government critics have been silenced or jailed They are mainly Islamists but also prominent secular activists and opposition figures including many of those behind the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni MubarakThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever