Cairo: Egypt’s presidential contender Abdul Fattah Al Sissi has won around 94 per cent of the votes cast by expatriates in the presidential elections, his campaign claimed on Tuesday, citing unofficial returns.
The predictions were based after a count of two thirds of the ballots cast during the five-day voting period that ended on Monday, Al Sissi’s campaign said in a statement.
The ex-army chief swept polls in countries with high voter numbers, mainly in the UAE, where he gained 95.4 per cent of the votes, followed by 94 per cent in Saudi Arabia.
Al Sissi also garnered 96 per cent of the votes in Italy, 92 per cent in France, 90 per cent in Britain, 88 per cent in Belgium and 82 per cent in Germany, according to his team.
Campaigners for his only challenger Hamdeen Sabahi declined to comment on the reported results.
A total of 317,000 Egyptians abroad voted in the polls, a figure higher than the combined numbers of expatriates who voted in the two rounds of Egypt’s 2012 presidential balloting, the election commission said.
Al Sissi’s reported landslide comes less than a week before Egyptians at home vote in the presidential elections, the country’s first since the military deposed Islamist president Mohammad Mursi last July.
“The results of the expatriates’ votes are not an indicator of those at home,” said Waheed Abdul Majeed, an expert at the state-run Al Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies.
“Not all nine million Egyptians living abroad usually vote. Accordingly, using the expatriates’ vote as a barometer for the coming vote at home will lead to inaccurate results.”
Al Sissi and Sabahi are the only contenders in the May 26-27 elections. The final result is to be officially announced on June 5.
Al Sissi is expected to win. His supporters see him as capable of stemming the street turmoil and economic deterioration that have hit Egypt for more than three years.
