CAIRO — In an election all but certain to hand Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi a second term, the focus Monday was on whether people would bother to cast ballots as three days of voting got underway.
El-Sissi and his supporters urged Egyptians to flock to polling stations, presenting participation as a national duty. They hope a strong turnout will give the outcome a measure of credibility after any serious challengers were arrested or pressured to withdraw from the race. Authorities also clamped down on the media and government critics in the run-up to the vote.
The only other name on the ballot is a relatively obscure politician, Moussa Mostafa Moussa, who leads the centrist Ghad party and is an ardent supporter of the president.
In central districts of the capital, Cairo, some voters were already lined up outside polling stations before they opened at 9 a.m. Most, it seemed, were there to support el-Sissi.
“There’s no alternative,” said George Hathout, 70, who cast his ballot at a school in the upscale neighborhood of Zamalek.
He said the country needs a military man like el-Sissi, a former chief of the armed forces who seized power from the country’s first democratically elected president, the Islamist Mohamed Morsi, amid a popular uprising in 2013. Militants have stepped up their attacks since Morsi’s fall; two policemen were killed Sunday in a bombing targeting the local security chief in the coastal city of Alexandria.
“We are fighting against terror,” Hathout said, speaking loudly to be heard over the patriotic songs blaring from loud speakers outside his polling station, where several men danced and waved the Egyptian flag.
El-Sissi, he said, “is a soldier first … he knows how to fight.”
Hathout conceded, however, that he knew little about the other contender in the race, a businessman who barely campaigned after submitting his candidacy hours before a January deadline.
Despite a heavy military and police presence, there was a celebratory mood outside polling stations Monday.
Mona Shalaby, 70, beamed as she emerged from a downtown school, waving a pink ink-stained finger to show she had voted. She said she had arrived early to be one of the first to vote for el-Sissi and declared herself “very happy.”
Analysts, however, expect many among Egypt’s 59 million eligible voters to stay away from the polls, either out of apathy or in response to calls for a boycott by some of the president’s former challengers.
Just over 47 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in 2014, despite a decision to add a third day of voting and the declaration of a last-minute public holiday. Although the turnout was respectable by the standards of most Western countries, it fell short of the 80 percent el-Sissi himself had said he hoped for. He garnered 97 percent of the vote against a lone challenger.
Many Egyptians say they are exhausted after years of political and economic turmoil following massive street protests in 2011 that toppled the country’s former strongman, Hosni Mubarak, and galvanized “Arab Spring” uprisings across the region.
El-Sissi’s government has vowed to crush Islamist extremists, including a branch of Islamic State in the Sinai Peninsula blamed for deadly attacks against the country’s security forces, Coptic Christian minority and a Sufi Muslim mosque. He also has enacted economic reforms — including lifting currency controls and imposing painful subsidy cuts — that earned Egypt a $12 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.
But if unsanctioned street protests have largely disappeared, it is likely because of a sweeping crackdown on dissent. Since Morsi was driven from office, thousands of his Muslim Brotherhood followers have been jailed along with leading secular activists. Others are in hiding or fled the country.
“It is a game,” said a 25-year-old Cairo resident, explaining why she won’t be voting this week.
She does not see any difference between el-Sissi and Moussa. Regardless of who you pick, she said, “you will choose the same person.”
Like others who were critical of the election, she asked to be identified by one name, Engy, out of fear of recriminations.
——
©2018 Los Angeles Times
Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
———
PHOTO (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): EGYPT-ELECTION
—————
Topics: t000032883,t000040464,t000032881,g000362714,g000224441,g000362724
