CAIRO (AFP) – Egyptian citizens living abroad will cast early ballots in a presidential election, in a vote all but certain to give incumbent Abdel Fattah al-Sisi a third term in office.
In 121 countries, 137 embassies and consulates will receive Egyptians in the election’s first round over the next three days, before voters at home go the polls from December 10 to 12.
As well as Sisi, voters in the Arab world’s most populous country can choose from three other candidates – all of them low-profile veteran politicians.
The trio – Farid Zahran of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, Hazem Omar of the People’s Republican Party and Abdel Sanad Yamama, who leads Egypt’s historic Wafd party – secured their candidacies through endorsements by members of Parliament.
Sisi’s campaign said the former army chief had received over one million nominations from citizens.
Egypt’s electoral law states requires each candidate to obtain the endorsement of either 20 lawmakers or 25,000 citizens in order to be eligible – a rule that disqualified who some saw as the opposition’s only genuine candidate.
After a decade-long crackdown on dissent, a decimated opposition briefly seemed poised to rally behind former parliamentarian and staunch Sisi critic Ahmed al-Tantawi, who had collected only 14,000 endorsements by the deadline in October.
Tantawi and 22 members of his campaign will face court next month for circulating unauthorised endorsement forms, in a trial condemned by rights groups as an example of widespread state repression.
In the lead-up to the election, the three challengers have been hosted by government-aligned talk show hosts, and rare campaign posters have been hoisted on streets flooded with images of Sisi.
