President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was confirmed for a fourth term in office yesterday as results of Sunday's referendum showed that an overwhelming majority supported him for a further six years as President.
As there was no challenger for the post, the result of the vote was a foregone conclusion. The only unknown was whether the yes vote would veer significantly from three previous polls, all of which gave the President a mandate of at least 95 per cent.
In the event, it fell by almost 2 per cent, to 93.79 per cent, according to the Minister of the Interior, Mr Habib el-Adli. This meant that 17.55 million people out of the 18.96 million who voted had said yes to a fourth term for Mr Mubarak. Turnout was said to be just over 79 per cent of registered voters.
Announcing the results on national television, Mr Adli somewhat grandiosely declared that "the people's choice is nothing short of a new dawn". The vote, he said, was "a choice for one who epitomises nationalism in its most supreme sense". The people "have pledged allegiance to Mr Mubarak, who has taken them across several treacherous bridges for the sake of economic prosperity and solid infrastructure."
With the formality of the referendum over, speculation now centres on whether Mr Mubarak will appoint a vice-president to succeed him. He himself came to power via the vice-presidency, assuming the office of President when his predecessor, Anwar Sadat, was killed by Islamist militants in 1981.
Despite several assassination attempts on Mr Mubarak - the most recent when a man attacked him with a knife at the beginning of this month - he has steadfastly refused to appoint a successor. This has raised the worrying spectre of a destabilising power struggle in the case of his sudden death.
The only other change likely to come about as the result of the vote is a sorely needed cabinet shuffle. Although the cabinet of the Prime Minister, Mr Kamal Ganzouri, has been in office only since January 1996, many ministers have been at their posts for decades.
In the past, most cabinet shuffles resulted in only a few real changes and many have simply ended with members of the old guard, many of whom are firmly rooted in the statist ideology of Egypt in the 1960s and 1970s, switching jobs with one another.
As Egypt continues with its ambitious programme of economic re form, calls for their replacement with new, younger faces are likely to grow.