Middle East

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi wins third term as president of Egypt

Former army commander takes nearly 90 per cent of the vote against three almost unknown opponents

The head of Egypt's national election authority, Hazem Badawy, speaks during a press conference to announce the results of the presidential elections, in Cairo, Egypt. Photograph: Tarek Wajeh/EPA

Heba Saleh in Cairo
Mon Dec 18 2023 - 18:17

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has secured a third six-year term in office after an election in which he stood against three almost unknown opponents.

The electoral commission announced on Monday that Sisi, a former army commander, had secured 89.6 per cent of the vote on a turnout of 66.8 per cent.

The only potentially serious challenger, Ahmed Tantawy, a left-wing journalist and former MP, withdrew in October after claiming that the authorities had impeded his nomination. He said officials and pro-regime thugs blocked supporters from providing the notarised endorsements he needed to qualify as a candidate. The electoral commission dismissed his allegations.

Tantawy now faces charges of illegally circulating endorsement forms printed off the internet. He remains free, but 22 members of his campaign have been arrested and face similar charges.

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The three contenders were Farid Zahran, head of the Egyptian Social Democratic party, who won 4 per cent of the vote; Abdel-Sanad Yamama, head of the Wafd party, with 1.9 per cent; and Hazem Omar, head of the People’s Republican Party, who secured 4.5 per cent.

Sisi led a popularly backed coup in 2013 against Egypt’s elected Islamist president, which ended the brief democratic experiment that started with a mass uprising in 2011 that toppled long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak.

Space for dissent has shrunk drastically under Sisi’s leadership, and media and political life have been brought fully under the control of the security agencies.

Thousands of people have been arrested, most of them Islamists but democracy activists and secular regime critics have also been imprisoned.

Sisi’s supporters have praised what they consider the stability he has delivered in a region full of failing states. But opponents are angry over the absence of political freedoms and the space to question the regime’s policies, including its management of the economy

As Sisi embarks on his third term in office, his main challenge is to address a grinding economic crisis fuelled by extensive foreign borrowing to fund a large infrastructure programme, which includes the construction of a new capital on the outskirts of Cairo.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 prompted foreign investors in Egyptian debt to pull out $20 billion (€18 billion), leaving the heavily indebted country suffering from a severe shortage of foreign currency.

The official rate of the Egyptian pound has halved against the dollar since March 2022, but foreign exchange remains scarce and the pound trades at an even lower rate on the black market.

Soaring inflation had heaped further pressures on a population in which 60 per cent fit international definitions of poverty even before the latest economic crisis. The annual inflation rate was almost 35 per cent in November, according to government figures. A new devaluation of the Egyptian pound is expected post-election to unblock a loan from the IMF.

Sisi also has to contend with the war in neighbouring Gaza that threatens to send refugees across the border. Israel’s bombardment has reduced large parts of the besieged enclave to a rubble-filled wasteland and it has displaced one million Palestinians to the border town of Rafah, where many live in tents on the streets in appalling conditions with little food or clean water.

The UN has warned that the catastrophic conditions stemming from Israel’s offensive could drive desperate Palestinians into Egypt. Sisi has accused the Jewish state of seeking to expel Gazans to Egypt and repeatedly rejected what he described as the liquidation of the Palestinian cause at the expense of neighbours.

– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023.

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