Egypt’s el-Sisi wins re-election with 97 per cent of the vote
CAIRO — Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has won a second, four-year term in office, with more than 97 per cent of the vote in last week’s election, according to official results announced Monday by the election commission, which put turnout at 41.05 per cent.
El-Sissi faced no serious challenger in the March 26-28 vote, after a string of potentially strong candidates withdrew under pressure or were arrested. His sole opponent, little-known politician Moussa Mustafa Moussa, was a supporter of the president who made no effort to challenge him. Moussa, won less than three per cent of the vote, and far less than the 1.76 million invalid ballots cast.
In a televised address, el-Sissi thanked voters and promised to work for all Egyptians, saying “those who renewed their trust in me and gave me their votes are no different from those who did otherwise.”
“Egypt is large enough for all Egyptians, so long as our differences of opinion do not adversely affect the nation,” said el-Sissi, who has often insisted that the country’s stability must come before the expansion of political freedoms.
Mentioning Moussa by name for the first time since the French-educated politician joined the race in January, elSissi thanked him for the “patriotic, honourable and civilized competition” he and his campaign had shown. Moussa had earlier congratulated el-Sissi and defended his decision to enter the race at the last minute, which critics had suggested was aimed at sparing the government the embarrassment of a one-candidate race.
“Those who criticized me had ulterior motives against the country. They wanted it to be a referendum, but I turned it into a free and open election,” Moussa said.
The vote’s result and the absence of any meaningful competition between the two candidates hearkened back to the yes-or-no referendums held by Egypt’s autocratic leaders in the decades before the 2011 uprising raised hopes of democratic change.
El-Sissi led the 2013 military overthrow of Egypt’s first freely elected leader, the Islamist Mohammed Morsi. El-Sissi has since overseen a sweeping crackdown on dissent, jailing thousands of Islamists and several prominent secular activists, and rolling back most of the freedoms won in the 2011 uprising.
El-Sissi has enacted ambitious economic reforms, including subsidy cuts and the flotation of the local currency, that have won international praise but exacted a heavy toll on ordinary Egyptians. Egypt has meanwhile struggled to contain an insurgency based in the northern Sinai that gained strength after Morsi’s overthrow and is now led by the Islamic State group.