World Courant
Incumbent Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is more likely to safe a 3rd time period regardless of the nation dealing with a extreme financial disaster.
Egyptians will vote in presidential elections overshadowed by the warfare in neighboring Gaza and financial issues, with the incumbent president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, more likely to safe a 3rd time period in workplace.
Polls opened at 9am (0700 GMT) on Sunday, with dozens of voters queuing outdoors polling stations in central Cairo amid heavy safety.
Voting shall be open every single day till Tuesday between 9am and 9pm (7am-7pm GMT) and the official outcomes shall be introduced on December 18.
About 67 million persons are eligible to vote, and all eyes shall be on turnout after successive earlier elections produced low participation figures.
Analysts say the economic system is prime of voters’ agenda in Sunday’s elections because the nation is within the grip of the worst monetary disaster in its latest historical past – with inflation hovering round 40 p.c after the forex, the Egyptian pound, since March misplaced half its worth. .
Even earlier than the present disaster, about two-thirds of the nation’s practically 106 million residents lived at or beneath the poverty line.
Regardless of Egypt’s issues, a decade-long crackdown on dissent has eradicated any critical opposition to el-Sisi, the fifth president to emerge from the ranks of the navy since 1952.
Beneath his rule, Egypt has jailed 1000’s of political prisoners, and whereas a presidential pardon committee has freed round a thousand folks in a single yr, human rights teams say three to 4 instances as many individuals have been arrested in the identical interval.
Egyptians, in the meantime, have paid little consideration to election campaigns which have taken place within the shadow of Israel’s warfare on Gaza.
Rivals not so well-known
The three different candidates are all comparatively unknown to the general public: Farid Zahran, chief of Egypt’s left-wing Social Democratic Celebration; Abdel-Sanad Yamama, of the Wafd, a centuries-old however comparatively marginal get together; and Hazem Omar, of the Republican Individuals’s Celebration.
El-Sisi, a retired discipline marshal within the Egyptian military, got here to energy in 2013 after main the overthrow of the nation’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi. The Muslim Brotherhood, to which Morsi belonged, was banned after the 2013 coup.
Within the 2014 and 2018 elections, he gained landslide victories with greater than 96 p.c of the vote, in accordance with official outcomes.
El-Sisi later prolonged the presidential time period from 4 to 6 years and amended the structure to extend the restrict on consecutive phrases from two to 3.
The incumbent president is just not with out supporters, a lot of whom credit score him with bringing a couple of return to calm within the nation after the chaos that adopted the 2011 rebellion that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.
Beginning in 2016, el-Sisi applied a raft of financial reforms, devaluing the forex and lowering the variety of civil servants.
These reforms, coupled with costly tasks together with multibillion-dollar new capital, have led to rising costs, fueled public discontent and undermined el-Sisi’s help at residence and overseas.
Beneath el-Sisi’s financial stewardship, the nationwide debt has tripled, whereas varied mega-projects – typically led by the navy – have didn’t ship on promised advantages.
Egyptians vote in presidential election clouded by financial disaster and Gaza warfare | Information
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