CAIRO // Security forces fanned out across Egypt on Monday during the first day of a presidential election that many expect will be won by the man who led the removal of former president Mohammed Morsi last summer.
Abdel Fattah El Sisi, who headed Egypt’s military before setting his sights on the presidency, is the clear front-runner in the seventh national vote held since nationwide protests in 2011 ended the nearly 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak.
Campaigning on security and his armed forces credentials, Mr El Sisi, 59, has overseen a crackdown on opponents of Mr Morsi’s removal after a year in power. Those arrests and killing have come amid a wave of violence since Mr Morsi’s overthrow, with scores of policemen and soldiers killed in attacks.
More than 400,000 security personnel were deployed across the country to counter the threat of violence. Democracy International, a US-funded group, and the European Union provided monitors to oversee the poll.
While rights groups have criticised the crackdown, support for Mr El Sisi and the military that he led appears far-reaching among Egyptians who have grown weary of the last three years of violence and a deteriorating economy.
In a suit and tie, Mr El Sisi cast his vote in front of jubilant crowds in an upscale area of the capital. In remarks to reporters at the polling station, he said the “whole world is watching to see how the Egyptians will make history”.
He won 95 per cent of the vote among Egyptians living abroad, although a recent poll by the US-based Pew Research Centre suggests suggest that his popularity may have begun to fade in recent days.
No details about the turnout were immediately available for the two-day vote, but Mr El Sisi hopes it will be high enough to demonstrate to his critics inside the country and abroad that he owed his rise to power on popular legitimacy. At some polling stations in Cairo, his supporters expressed their enthusiasm for his candidacy by dancing and singing nationalist songs.
“He saved Egypt!” shouted Eifat Olama, who said she was older than 70 and had seven grandchildren living in Canada. “All of Egypt is with him!”
She and others at the polling station criticised those who supported the only other candidate in the poll, Hamdeen Sabahi, a leftist who backed Mr El Sisi and the military toppling of the Morsi government.
A television report of a bomb outside a polling station in the city of El Mahalla El Kubra was quickly denied by the interior ministry, which blamed the incident on a vehicle backfiring in the area. By mid-afternoon, voting took place amid largely peaceful if sometimes disorganised circumstances in the capital.
The Muslim Brotherhood and some liberal groups are boycotting the vote because of the killing of hundreds and the arrest of thousands since last summer.
Leaders of the Brotherhood, which the military-installed government classified in December as a terrorist organisation, warned that the crackdown on its supporters could trigger more violence.
“There is no option for any government in Egypt other than to bring about national reconciliation,” Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh, a former Brotherhood leader, told Reuters. “The injustices must stop.”
Some expressed discomfort with the military’s intervention in politics, such as Farahat Tamer, 31, a construction worker who lives in Buleq Abu Leila, a low-income neighbourhood in the capital.
“He was supposed to have four years and we should have waited four years and then, if we didn’t like him, we could have voted for someone else,” he said.
“The situation was bad then, but now there is no work and we can hardly live.”
Many others have thrown their backing behind Mr El Sisi, hoping he will stabilise the country’s economy, which struggles with rising unemployment and food prices, as well as huge public outlays on energy subsidies.
“We need reforms in our economy and we need to focus on the needs of the poor,” said Saeid Shehat, 61, a soft drinks vendor who also lives in Buleq Abu Leila.
“Sisi is a military man and military men have always run Egypt. They can impose policies, and Sisi’s policies are good for the people.”
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
* Additional reporting by Reuters and Associated Press