Al Sissi eyes big turnout as Egypt vote wraps up

Cairo: Egypt was wrapping up a presidential election Tuesday with front-runner ex-army chief Abdul Fattah Al Sissi eyeing a strong turnout to give credibility to his overthrow of the elected Islamist president.

The retired field marshal’s supporters have expressed fears of a low turnout after the first day of voting, as Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood and secular dissidents called for a boycott.

As polls opened for the second and final day of voting, authorities announced that they were declaring a public holiday and extending polling hours until 7pm to encourage voters to cast their ballots.

A comfortable win for former army chief Abdul Fattah Al Sissi over his sole rival leftist Hamdeen Sabahi has never been seriously in doubt.

But Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood, subjected to a brutal police crackdown in which hundreds of its supporters have been killed, has called for boycott and said it will not recognise the election’s outcome.

So too have key activists behind the Arab Spring uprising that toppled long-time strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2011, who fear Al Sissi is an autocrat in the making.

The interior ministry said that turnout on the first day of voting reached about 16 million out of the country’s 53 million eligible voters.

But several Cairo polling stations were deserted in the first hours of voting on Tuesday.

“I don’t want to be part of those responsible for all those people who died,” Tarek Salim said, explaining his decision not to vote over tea at a Cairo café.

Fellow boycotter Diaa Hussain complained that the election offered no real choice. “Al Sissi didn’t leave a chance for anyone else to win,” he said.

Al Sissi issued a personal plea for a large turnout after casting his own ballot on Monday.

“The entire world is watching us, how Egyptians are writing history and their future today and tomorrow,” he said, surrounded by cheering supporters.

The rival candidates have portrayed the vote as a choice between stability and the freedoms promised by the Arab Spring.

The Arab world’s most populous nation has been rocked by turmoil since the uprising which has ravaged the economy and its vital tourism sector.

Al Sissi’s ouster of Mursi last year triggered the worst peacetime bloodshed in recent Egyptian history but the former army chief has vowed to stamp out the violence.

A big security force deployment prevented any major polling day incidents.

A small bomb exploded in north Cairo on Tuesday without causing any casualties, the interior ministry said.

“We need an iron fist to restore the situation,” said 63-year-old engineer Kamal Mohammad Aziz, who had come with his wife to vote for Al Sissi.

“Security is the number one [concern]. It is security that we are missing,” said his wife Nevine.”

But civil servant Karim Al Demerdash said he had voted for Al Sissi’s sole challenger Sabahi to try to preserve the gains of the 2011 uprising.

“I am sure that the election results are already decided but this is the last attempt to bring the revolution into power,” he said.

Al Sissi has said “true democracy” will take a couple of decades, and suggested he will not tolerate protests disrupting the economy.

He has also pledged to eliminate the Brotherhood, which won every election following Mubarak’s overthrow after being banned for decades.

“Forgery will never grant legitimacy to a butcher nor will it lessen the determination of revolutionaries,” the Brotherhood said as it urged a boycott.

The Brotherhood has been decapitated by a police crackdown that has killed more than 1,400 people and left all of its top leaders in jail or exile.

Mursi himself has been detained and put on trial.

“This election will not wipe the slate clean after 10 months of gross human rights violations,” Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, said.

Hundreds of soldiers and policemen have also been killed in militant attacks since Mursi’s overthrow, with the deadliest claimed by an Al Qaida-inspired group based in the restive Sinai Peninsula.

Al Sissi’s sole rival Sabahi, a veteran dissident, has vowed to defend the democratic aspirations of the 2011 revolt.

“We swear to God that symbols of corruption and despotism [from the Mubarak era] will not return,” he said.