Egypt poll begins with el-Sissi certain winner

CAIRO (AP) — Polls opened yesterday in Egypt’s presidential election with the outcome — a second, four-year term for President Abdel-Fattah elSissi — a foregone conclusion, in what is seen by critics as a signal of the country’s return to the authoritarian rule that prevailed since the 1950s.

A general-turned-president, el-Sissi is challenged by Moussa Mustafa Moussa, a little known politician who joined the race in the last minute to spare the government the embarrassment of a onecandidate election after several hopefuls were forced out of the race or arrested.

Moussa has made no effort to challenge el-Sissi, who never mentioned his challenger once in public.

Authorities hope enough people — there are nearly 60 million eligible voters — will vote in the three-day balloting to give the election legitimacy.

Among the presidential hopefuls who had stepped forward earlier this year were some who might have attracted a sizable protest vote.

But they were all either arrested or intimidated out of the race, making this the least competitive election since the 2011 popular uprising ousted longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak and raised hopes of democratic change.

El-Sissi cast his ballot as soon as the polls opened at 9 a.m. at a girls’ school in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. He made no comments, only shaking hands with election workers before he left.

There were no long lines of voters waiting in several Cairo districts, but past elections have shown many Egyptians prefer to wait for the afternoon or evening to vote. Authorities have not declared a holiday over the three-day vote. Footage aired by local television networks showed women dominating the early voters on Monday. They also showed festive scenes outside polling centers, with women and school children singing.

Tens of thousands of police and soldiers have been deployed to protect polling centers as well as key state installations during the election.

According to an Interior Ministry statement late Sunday, police killed six militants believed to be involved in a weekend bombing in the coastal city of Alexandria that killed two policemen. The statement said the militants belonged to a Muslim Brotherhood-linked group and that they were killed in a raid on their hideout north of Cairo.

Soldiers guarded the entrance from behind sandbags, weapons bristling at the ready, before polls opened at a polling station in Cairo’s Abdeen district.

Mohammed Ibrahim Ali, a retired engineer, patiently waited for the polls to open at Cairo’s bustling Sayda Zeinab, a middle-class neighborhood that is home to a much revered Islamic shrine.