Egypt votes for president, with el-Sissi certain to win

CAIRO — Egyptians began voting Monday in an election that President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi is virtually guaranteed to win, one that resembles the referendums held by Arab autocrats in the decades before the 2011 uprisings briefly raised hopes of democratic change.

His only challenger is Moussa Mustafa Moussa, a little-known politician who joined the race at the last minute to spare the government the embarrassment of a one-candidate election after several hopefuls were forced out or arrested.

Moussa, who supported el-Sissi until he joined the race, made no effort to challenge the incumbent, who never mentioned his challenger once in public. “Today we want the people to come out and vote ... It doesn’t matter who wins as long as Egypt remains safe,” Moussa said after casting his ballot Monday.

Authorities hope enough of Egypt’s nearly 60 million eligible voters will take part in the three-day balloting to give the election legitimacy. Local media, which are dominated by pro-government commentators, have portrayed voting as a national obligation and the only way to prevent foreign conspiracies from sowing instability.

Some of the presidential hopefuls who had stepped forward might have attracted a sizable protest vote, but they were all either arrested or intimidated into withdrawing, making this the least competitive election since the 2011 uprising ousted longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

The vote is being held against the backdrop of the most wide-ranging crackdown on dissent in decades, with thousands of Islamists as well as several prominent secular activists in jail. Unauthorized protests are banned, critical voices have been silenced in the local media, and hundreds of websites, including those of independent media and rights groups, have been blocked.

El-Sissi, who led the 2013 military overthrow of Egypt’s first freely elected president, the Islamist Mohammed Morsi, cast his ballot as soon as the polls opened at 9 a.m., at a girls’ school in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. He made no public comments.

Associated Press reporters visiting polling stations across Cairo saw short lines formed in front of some locations and others that were nearly empty as of early afternoon, though more voters were expected to come out in the evening and over the next two days.

Local television aired footage of festive scenes outside some polling stations, with women and children singing nationalistic songs. The national election commission reported large turnout in Cairo, Alexandria and northern Sinai, the epicenter of an insurgency led by the Islamic State group, but provided no figures. ContinueReading