Egypt votes in poll seen sweeping ex-army boss to power

CAIRO — Egyptians voted for a new president Monday in an election expected to sweep to power the ex-army chief who overthrew the country’s first democratically elected leader and crushed his Islamist movement.

The two-day election is the first since the frontrunner Abdel Fattah Al Sisi deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July, a move that unleashed the bloodiest violence in Egypt’s recent history.

Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood is boycotting the vote, as are revolutionary youths who fear Sisi is an autocrat in the making.

But the 59-year-old retired field marshall is expected to trounce his sole rival, leftist Hamdeen Sabbahi, amid widespread calls for stability.

Polling stations opened at 0600 GMT for 53 million registered voters, with Sisi arriving early at one in Cairo to cast his ballot amid a throng of jostling reporters and supporters.

“The entire world is watching us, how Egyptians are writing history and their future today and tomorrow,” Sisi said.

“Egyptians must be reassured that tomorrow will be very beautiful and great,” he said, as supporters shook his hand and kissed his cheeks.

Many view the vote as a referendum on stability versus the freedoms promised by the Arab Spring-inspired popular uprising that ousted veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Since the revolution, the country of 86 million people has been rocked by sporadic unrest and a tanking economy.

Mubarak’s successor, the Islamist Morsi, lasted one year in office, winning Egypt’s first democratic presidential election only to quickly alienate many who held mass rallies demanding his resignation.

“We need someone who speaks in a determined and strong way. The Egyptian people are frightened by this and respect those who are like this,” said Milad Yusef, a 29-year-old lawyer waiting to vote in Cairo.

Yusef said he had voted for Sabbahi in the 2012 election that Morsi won, but that he would now back Sisi.

“We need someone strong, a military man,” he said.

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

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

The movement is boycotting the election and said Sunday it would reject the outcome. The vote is being monitored by international and Egyptian groups.

Heavy security 

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

Voting in the pro-Morsi town of Kerdasa, 35 kilometres southwest of Cairo, was low as loyalists of the ousted president stayed indoors.

“Sisi killed youths and now he is grabbing power. This is the biggest evidence that [Morsi’s ouster] was a coup,” Mohamed Gamal, a law graduate who boycotted the vote, told AFP.

Police raided the town in September after 13 officers were killed following Morsi’s overthrow.

The Brotherhood, now blacklisted as a terrorist group, has been decapitated in a police crackdown that has killed more than 1,400 people, including an estimated 700 protesters on one day in August.

Morsi himself has been detained and put on trial.

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

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

Sisi has called for a high turnout in the election, billed by the military-installed authorities and the West as a milestone toward elected rule.

The poll will be followed by parliamentary elections this year

Sisi’s sole rival Sabbahi, 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.

Sisi has raised fears Egypt could see more repression than under Mubarak.

“What tourist would come to a country where we have demonstrations like this?” he asked Egyptian newspaper editors ahead of the vote.

“You write in the newspapers: ‘No voice is louder than freedom of speech!’ What is that?”

The April 6 youth movement, which spearheaded the anti-Mubarak revolt and whose leader has been jailed, has called for a boycott of the election.