Egypt Counts Votes for Election El-Sisi Is Certain to Win

Mirette Magdy
·3-min read

(Bloomberg) -- Egypt is counting votes for an election in which President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi is poised to win a third term, despite the backdrop of the country’s worst economic crisis in decades.

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Three days of polling concluded around 9 p.m. local time Tuesday, with electoral authorities due to announce an initial vote tally on Wednesday. The final results are scheduled for Dec. 18.

Authorities encouraged as many as possible of Egypt’s 67 million eligible voters to take part, describing casting a ballot as a national duty. They’re keen to avoid any suggestion of apathy in a country where inflation is running at 35% and foreign investors expect another currency devaluation in the coming months.

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Turnout for the first and second days was more than 45%, the electoral commission said Monday, already higher than the vote in 2018. El-Sisi won around 97% of ballots back then and in 2014, when the former field marshal first took office.

El-Sisi once again faces little serious opposition in a bid for a new six-year term that would extend his rule until 2030. With the outcome not in doubt, authorities have instead focused on getting people to participate. At polling stations, crowds waved national flags and sang patriotic songs. Several Egyptian movie stars publicized their trips to voting stations on social media.

Now the polls have closed, many voters’ minds will return to Egypt’s soaring cost of living. Three currency devaluations since early 2022 have seen inflation jump, and many in the country of more than 105 million people are struggling to make ends meet.

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The widespread hardship could test El-Sisi. Protesters helped topple his two predecessors: long-time strongman Hosni Mubarak during the Arab Spring 12 years ago and Islamist Mohamed Mursi in 2013.

A further weakening of the pound, which has already lost half its value against the dollar with the devaluations, would pile more pain on consumers. Such a move, though, may be necessary to ease dire shortages of hard currency and help authorities obtain a rescue package of over $5 billion from the International Monetary Fund.

Read More: Egypt Needs Cash and Gaza War Gives World New Reasons to Help

El-Sisi, a career military officer before he turned to politics, is also confronted with challenges related to the Israel-Hamas war, which has revived Egypt’s diplomatic role in the region.

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The nation is the only gateway for aid to reach Gaza and was a key player in hostage talks that enabled a brief truce in the two-month conflict in late November.

Many Egyptians have rallied round El-Sisi over the war, supporting his refusal to accept a mass relocation of Palestinians into Egypt lest they bring Hamas with them and aren’t allowed back to their homeland. They’ve also backed the call from him and other Arab leaders for a cease-fire as the death toll among Palestinians mounts. Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by the US and the EU.

Yasser Gaber, who sells ice cream from a bike cart in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, said the cost of living was “much more affordable” before El-Sisi took charge. But “safety and security is much better,” he said.

The president’s “a military guy who makes the state security his priority,” said Gaber, who has three kids and earns about 150 pounds ($4.85) per day.

Like him, many Egyptians say security is just as crucial a consideration as economic conditions.

“The most important thing is to live in safety,” Sameh Magdy, a 48-year-old engineer, said at a polling station in the Cairo neighborhood of Nasr City.

(Updates with count continuing.)

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