BICOM

Today is the final day of voting in the Egyptian Presidential elections, with voters choosing between President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi and Moussa Mustafa Moussa, leader of the liberal Ghad Party.

Al-Sisi is virtually certain to win re-election after all serious rivals were either arrested or intimidated into withdrawing from the election.

The decision to extend voting over three days was intended to increase participation, but AP reports “only a trickle of voters entering the polling stations, at a rate of around two dozen an hour”.

The newswire found that “at one station in the suburban Sixth of October district on Tuesday, where some 8,000 voters are registered, judges, who in Egypt supervise the balloting, said the previous day’s turnout had been around 14 per cent”. One judge said voters had been coerced to vote.  He said: “I have been hearing stories that hurt my ears… Ministries, government agencies, large supermarkets… You see groups coming together and you can ask them and see what brought them.”

The Wall Street Journal concluded that “low voter participation would weaken Mr Sisi’s ability to deal with domestic discontent over the economy and security, while making him vulnerable to growing international criticism of his human-rights record”. Both state-run and private media in Egypt are backing al-Sisi and reporting a high turnout. However, reporting on the election is restricted, with journalists banned from asking voters whom they support.

Al-Sisi, a former General, came to power following the 2013 military coup in Egypt. In 2014, he won more than 96 per cent of the vote in an election after the government extended voting for an extra day after concerns about low turnout. However, only about 48 per cent of those eligible to vote did so.