Egypt's Sisi secures third term in overwhelming election win

CAIRO — Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El Sisi has won a third term with 89.6 per cent of the vote in the Arab world's most populous nation, the national election authority said on Monday. 

The outcome of the December 10-12 poll secured 69-year-old Sisi his third and, according to the Egyptian constitution, final term in office, starting in April and set to run for six years.

It was the third time in a decade Sisi wins a landslide victory. In both 2014 and 2018, Sisi won over 96 per cent of the vote.

The runner-up Hazem Omar, who leads the Republican People's Party, received 4.5 per cent of the vote. 

Next came Farid Zahran, leader of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, and Abdel-Sanad Yamama from the Wafd, a century-old but relatively marginal party.

The election authority said turnout was "unprecedented" at 66.8 per cent of 67 million registered voters. This was up from 41 per cent in 2018 and 47 per cent in 2014.

Sisi, a retired army field marshall, was first voted in as president after the overthrow of Islamist president Mohammad Morsi in 2013.

He is credited with engineering a return to public order after a period of Islamist political violence and chaos that followed the 2011 uprising that overthrew Hosni Mubarak.

From 2016 onward, he undertook a host of economic reforms that have required severe austerity measures and multiple currency devaluations.