(3 Minutes read)
Sisi, 69, is expected to win hands down the election since there is no opposition to him
For the second consecutive day on Monday (yesterday), 67 million Egyptians were called upon to choose their future president. The outgoing Abdel Fattah al-Sissi has been in power since he overthrew the Islamist Mohamed Morsi in 2013. His election in the present poll is a foregone conclusion and people are speculating whether he could improve on his voting margin than the previous election, in which he bagged 96% of the vote polled.
Sisi, 69, is expected to win hands down the election since there is no opposition to him. Also, a war has been raging since October between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas in the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt. Sisi’s supporters say that the country needs a strong president to rough through the impact of the war. Being a military man, they say, he is the right man for the job. But Sissi’s detractors do not buy this. They say this is a ploy being propagated by the state administration. They point out that under his stewardship, the country has gone down economically and the present economic woes are more due to inefficient handling of economic policies. They want a president who can control the market and prices, punish speculators, and look after the people when inflation is running at almost 40%, the currency has lost 50% of its value, and debt has tripled.
Read also:
https://trendsnafrica.com/egypts-polling-commenced-last-till-tuesday/
https://trendsnafrica.com/egypts-election-results-forgone-conclusion-political-analysts/
Three other candidates, generally unknown to the general public, are in the running: Farid Zahran, from a small left-wing party, Abdel-Sanad Yamama, from the Wafd, a century-old but now marginal party, and Hazem Omar, from the Republican People’s Party.
