Sisi Becomes President of Egypt for Third Time

Egypt has announced the results of the presidential election held on 10-12 December. According to Egypt's National Election Authority, the majority of votes, 89.6%, were cast by Egyptians for the current head of state, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. This will be his third presidential term, Reuters reports.

The election authority reports that the turnout was almost 67%, which is higher than in the previous elections in 2014 and 2018.

Al-Sisi was competing with three candidates - Social Democratic Party leader Farid Zahran, head of the liberal Wafd Party Abdel-Sanad Yamama, and Republican People's Party leader Hazem Omar.

According to The Washington Post, al-Sisi's victory in the elections was predictable. However, in his next cadence, he will have to face the aggravation of problems in the country and the region. Egypt has significantly increased its national debt, and the economy is unstable. It is estimated that almost every third citizen of the country of 105 million people lives in poverty.

In addition, Israel's war against the Hamas terrorist group is ongoing in the immediate vicinity. Egypt is one of the mediators in resolving the conflict, and through its border with the Gaza Strip, it has organised the evacuation of foreign nationals and the seriously wounded from Palestinian territory, and supplies humanitarian aid to Gaza. However, Egypt has categorically refused to accept Palestinian refugees.

A career officer, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was first elected president a year after he overthrew Islamist President Mohamed Morsi as Defence Minister in 2013. In 2018, al-Sisi was re-elected for a second four-year term. Constitutional amendments in 2019 added two more years to his current term and allowed him to run for a third, six-year term as president.

According to Deutsche Welle, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has been cracking down on the opposition in the most severe way since coming to power. Thousands of Islamists, activists and bloggers have been detained under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

The publication notes that Egypt is in a state of deep economic crisis, suffers from a chronic shortage of funds and is trying to prevent a bloody conflict from the neighbouring Gaza Strip from spreading to its territory.