Sisi secures third term as Egypt’s president
Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, president of Egypt, has won his third term of six years in office.
Egypt’s electoral commission announced al-Sisi’s victory on Monday.
According to the commission, the 69-year-old secured his re-election bid with 89.6 percent of the vote cast, with Hazem Omar, the runner-up securing only 4.5 percent.
Ahmed Tantawy, the leading opposition candidate, had pulled out of the race, citing intimidation and violence against his campaign camp.
Al-Sisi became president in 2014, a year after he had led the military’s overthrow of Mohammed Morsi, his Islamist predecessor, and was re-elected in 2018 — both times, with 97 percent of the vote.
The constitution was amended in 2019, extending the presidential term to six years from four, and allowing Sisi to stand for a third term and final term which begins in April.
The Egyptian leader has largely developed the country’s infrastructure and has built a new capital from scratch in the desert east of Cairo.
But critics of his administration say his priorities are a costly extravagance at a time when Egypt’s debt has swollen and prices have soared.
He said Egypt had to do all it could to stop the war between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group ruling, describing it as his country’s primary challenge.
Israel’s heavy bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip, after a Hamas assault into Israel, has flattened much of the enclave and left most of its people homeless but Egypt has warned it will not allow any cross-border exodus of Gazans.
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