CAIRO — Egypt’s presidential vote ended with the certain outcome that all were expecting: President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi secured another term that will keep him in power until 2030.
It was a landslide victory for el-Sisi who has been in power since 2014. He received 89.6% of what officials said was the highest turnout in Egypt’s election history amid a state-sponsored campaign of mobilization for voters.
According to the National Election Authority, the turnout was 66.8% of more than 67 million registered voters in the country of over 105 million people. That is compared to the 41% recorded at the last presidential election in 2018.
During the three-day vote held Dec. 10-12, authorities and pro-government media pushed hard to boost turnout.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
Throughout the voting, Ahmed al-Bandari, the top executive official at the election authority, held regular news conferences connected via video conference with chiefs of electoral committees across the country. The chiefs said they observed no obstacles, and that voting went smoothly. The turnout, they said, was massive.
Al-Bandari’s conference calls with the committee chiefs, however, never addressed what was happening in front of many polling centers across the country; practices that were observed by media outlets, including Mada Masr.
Food for votes
During their tours, the chiefs, who are effectively election arbiters, did not note the fixed queues of people who arrived outside the polling centers, who received cards before casting their ballots. Such cards would then be exchanged for 200 pounds (.5) each after voting.
There were multiple reports of people forcefully taken from the street to cast their ballots.
Likewise, they made no reference to the elderly citizens who were brought to line up outside the polling centers in return for bags of food, and other such practices, all documented by Mada Masr journalists. It was these such practices that were meant to mobilize voters.
According to Amr Abdel Rahman, director of the Civil Liberties Unit at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the talk about unprecedented voluntary turnout leaves out the multiple reports of people forcefully taken from the street to cast their ballots.
Moustafa Kamel al-Sayed, a political science professor and member of the opposition Civil Movement coalition, said the mobilization by the government and other state agencies to boost the turnout numbers was unprecedented. He also noted that at Cairo University, buses was brought in to transport university employees to polling centers during the voting days.
“Mobilizing voters with 200 pounds (.5) or a bag of rice and a bottle of oil has unfortunately become routine.” Abdel Rahman said.
Choose your candidate, just vote
A source close to el-Sisi campaign, meanwhile, said the election was “ideal,” adding that the campaign head’s directives were: “Let the people go out and vote, and no one tells them to vote for el-Sisi, and no one does anything about the result, whatever it may be.”
The source, who requested to remain anonymous, said the campaign consulted with specialists in boosting turnout amid concerns of pro-government parties that people would be reluctant to vote.
No one asked them to vote for el-Sisi.
When asked about bribing people to take part in the vote, the source said such practices, including paying money and distributing food and other supplies, existed, particularly in urban provinces. However, at least 20 million people “willingly” participated in the vote, he said.
“No one asked them to vote for el-Sisi,” he said.
A former member of the National Elections Authority said such practices are banned, and candidates and monitoring groups have the possibility to report what they viewed as violations committed during the vote.
Worst since 2014
All but one of the candidates’ campaigns praised the integrity of the elections and the impartiality of state agencies. The campaign of Farid Zahran, head of the opposition Social Democratic Party, instead said it documented irregularities and breaches of the electoral process and reported them to the election authority.
The election authority, however, said it didn’t receive any complaints from the candidates or their agents about the vote.
Abdel Rahman, the researcher, said the election was engineered to have el-Sisi win another term in power. He argued that the vote “was the worst” since 2014, when el-Sisi was elected president for the first time.
He pointed to Ahmed Tantawi, an ambitious politician, who had announced his intention to join the race, but ended his campaign after he failed to reach the endorsement threshold for candidacy. He accused authorities of intimidation and harassment of his supporters.
It was a foregone conclusion.
“They even made a terrifying court case against this candidate and brought charges against him (Tantawi) that would end his political career,” he said.
Both Abdel Rahman and al-Sayed said the results of the vote were nor taken seriously, as el-Sisi victory was widely deemed a foregone conclusion.
El-Sisi’s challengers were marginal political figures: Hazem Omar, head of the Republican People’s Party, came in second with 4.5% of the vote, followed by Zahran with 4%. The third challenger was Abdel-Sanad Yamama, chairman of the Wafd Party, who received less than 2% of the vote.
For Abdel Rahman and al-Sayed, the regime has successfully sent the same message to Egyptians as to the outside world: carry on, all is well, nothing to see here…
