Election of the Day: Egypt
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A reader gently prodded me to not ignore Egypt in my election series. I was on the fence about whether the presidential election ending today was interesting enough to warrant coverage. It’s not a serious election; there was never any real chance, despite some clear signs of frustration and declining support for the regime, that Sisi was going to lose. I’m not even sure there’s all that much to learn from whatever the official results end up being (presumably he’ll get less than the 97% he got in 2018), given how little faith Egyptians have in this election, and how unlikely it is they’ll be reported honestly. From today’s Reuters story:
Many Egyptians have shown little interest in or knowledge about the election, although authorities and commentators on tightly controlled local media have been urging them to vote out of national duty.
“I will not vote because I am sick of this country,” said 27-year-old taxi driver Hossam, who said his quality of life had deteriorated under Sisi’s decade-long rule.
“When they hold a real election I will go out and vote,” he said.
The election which began on Sunday is Sisi’s third since taking power in 2013 after the overthrow of Egypt’s first popularly elected president Mohamed Mursi. An Islamist, Mursi won the presidency a year after the ousting of long-ruling autocrat Hosni Mubarak in a popular uprising.
On Monday, the National Election Authority said that turnout on the first two days of voting had reached about 45%, surpassing that of the last presidential election in 2018, however critics cast doubt on these figures.
Reuters reporters who have been covering the elections in Cairo, Giza, Suez, and al-Arish over the last three days have witnessed crowds in front of polling stations, some being bussed in, but a relative trickle of citizens casting their votes.
“Each time Egyptians are asked to vote they are poorer than the last time, and Sisi is less popular, yet turnout is on the rise? No one, not even Sisi’s few remaining supporters, believes this is a real election,” said Timothy E. Kaldas, a policy fellow at Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.
One thing I did not realize until poking around about this election last week was how all-in Sisi’s regime appears to be on the latest iteration of the foolish and wasteful (but popular among autocrats and Australians) scheme of “build a new capital city from scratch on empty land.”
This series will return this weekend for a preview of the far more interesting snap election in Serbia. Consider this an open thread for all topics related to elections and/or Egypt.