POLLING stations opened Sunday for Egyptians to vote in a presidential election overshadowed by war in neighbouring Gaza and with little doubt that the incumbent Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will secure a third term.
In a country gripped by the most severe financial crisis in its recent history — inflation has hovered near 40 percent after the currency lost half its value and drove up the cost of imports — the economy is the crux of Egyptians’ concerns.
Even before the current crisis, about two-thirds of the country’s nearly 106 million people were living on or below the poverty line.
Before polls opened at 09:00 am (0700 GMT), dozens of voters had already crowded in front of a polling station in a central Cairo school amidst heavy security, an AFP correspondent reported.
Voting will take place from Sunday until Tuesday, between 9:00 am and 09:00 pm (0700-1900 GMT) each day, with the official results announced on December 18.
In front of the Cairo polling station, posters bore messages to “get out and participate” while a DJ played nationalist songs.
Some 67 million people are eligible to vote, and all eyes will be on turnout after successive previous elections mustered low participation figures.
Despite Egypt’s afflictions, a decade-long crackdown on dissent has eliminated any serious opposition to Sisi, the fifth president to emerge from within the ranks of the military since 1952.
Under his rule, Egypt has jailed thousands of political prisoners, and while a presidential pardons committee has freed around 1,000 in one year, rights groups say that three to four times that many were arrested over the same time period.
Egyptians, meanwhile, have paid little attention to electoral campaigns that have taken place in the shadow of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
That conflict has monopolised media and public attention across the Arab world. Talk shows in Egypt — closely tied to the intelligence services and fervent supporters of Sisi — have sought to link the two issues in the incumbent’s favour.
“We cannot sit idly by and watch, we will go out and say ‘no to the transfer’ (of Gazans),” said one TV presenter, Ahmed Moussa, echoing a speech by Sisi at the start of the war in October.
