In Egypt, the presidential election process began on Sunday with no less than 70 million eligible voters. The process will continue until Tuesday and the official results are expected to be announced on December 18, but President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is expected to win by a huge margin.
As mentioned, no surprises are expected in the land of the Nile. The main tension is concentrated in the economic arena - where the country faces an inflation rate approaching forty percent while the local currency has lost fifty percent of its value. On the ground, this means a rollercoaster of price increases, with 60 percent of the country's population of 106 million living below or close to the poverty line.
Egyptian President el-Sisi votes in presidential elections
In addition to Sisi, three relatively unknown local politicians are running for the presidency: Farid Zahran of the Egyptian Democratic Party, Abdel Sand Yamamiya of the veteran liberal Wafd party, and Hazam Omar of the Republican Popular Party. All three appeared on television for a televised debate, in which Sisi was not present and no one really believes they have a real chance of replacing him.
Two other candidates could not run at all. One of them is a liberal activist named Hisham Qassem, who is in prison, and the other is a former opposition MP, Ahmed al-Tantawi, who is currently on trial for "distributing election-related documents without the approval of the authorities."
In an interview with the American website Al-Hurra, Tantawi bitterly admitted that "the results of the presidential elections are already decided." In a burst of modesty, he noted that "the Egyptian regime has denied the possibility of a serious candidate who can win" – referring to himself. Al-Tantawi could not get enough signatures from citizens to run and blamed the authorities.
Against this backdrop, Egyptian activists are concerned about the "suffocating air and the regime's total control of the media." According to them, the security services even prevented the opposition from operating in the streets. On the other hand, many Egyptians see Sisi as having brought calm and stability to the country since the chaos of the Arab Spring in 2011 and the relatively short period of Muslim Brotherhood rule.
Since coming to power more than a decade ago in a military coup (2013), Sisi has been elected president twice, winning at the ballot box with more than 96 percent of the vote (2014 and 2018). Subsequently, he passed a constitutional amendment that extended his second term to six years from four years and also allowed him to run for a third term in office.
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