Cairo - Egyptians began voting on Monday
in a presidential election set to deliver an easy win for
incumbent Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, with turnout the main focus
after all serious opposition withdrew complaining of repression.
Polls will be open for three days and Sisi, a former
military commander, has urged Egyptians to go and vote, hinting
that he sees the election as a referendum on his four-year rule.
While many Egyptians see the US-allied leader as vital to
stability in a country where unrest since 2011 has hurt the
economy, critics say he has presided over Egypt's worst ever
crackdown on dissent and have dubbed the vote a charade.
Sisi, 63, who led the military's overthrow of Egypt's first
democratically elected President Mohamed Mursi in 2013, has cast
his bid for a second term as a vote for stability and security.
But a lower-than-expected turnout could suggest Sisi lacks a
mandate to take more of the tough steps needed to revive the
economy, which struggled after the 2011 revolution drove away
tourists and foreign investors, both sources of hard currency.
Early on Monday, dozens of people queued up to vote in and
around Cairo, but not in great numbers. Reuters correspondents
saw voters waiting outside schools converted into polling
stations.
"We're coming to support President Sisi. Anyone who doesn't
participate in the vote is a traitor," 76-year-old Saad Shahata,
a civil servant, said at a polling station in Monofiya province
north of Cairo.
Sisi's sole challenger in the March 26-28 vote is Moussa
Mostafa Moussa, a longtime Sisi supporter widely dismissed as a
dummy candidate: Moussa's Ghad party had actually endorsed Sisi
for a second term before he emerged as a last-minute challenger.
Moussa dismisses accusations he is being used to present a
false sense of competition, and the electoral commission says it
will ensure the vote is fair and transparent.
An editorial in state-owned newspaper al-Ahram acknowledged
the narrow choice for voters but suggested the mere holding of
the ballot signalled Egypt was regaining its strength in the
face of current domestic and foreign threats.
"The importance of presidential elections this time is not
fierce competition or a real (electoral) battle, but a message
to the world that Egypt is on its way through a recovery phase,"
it said.
Critics say Sisi's popularity since his 2014 election has
been hurt by austerity reforms and a muzzling of opponents,
activists and independent media. Courts have passed death
sentences on hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters since
2013.
Sisi's backers - who include Western powers and most Gulf
Arab dynasties - say the measures are needed to keep the
country stable as it recovers from political chaos and tackles
an Islamist insurgency focused in the Sinai Peninsula.
Neither candidate has done much campaigning, appealing
instead for a high turnout. Sisi won nearly 97 percent of the
vote in 2014, but less than half of eligible Egyptians voted
even though the election was extended to three days.
In remarks earlier this month that suggest Sisi may see the
vote as a referendum on his performance, he said: "If (all
Egyptians) vote and a third say 'No', that would be a lot better
than if half that number turn out and all of them say 'Yes'."
Several opposition figures called for a boycott of the vote
after all major opposition campaigns withdrew, saying repression
had cleared the field of credible challengers.
Sisi's top opponent, former military chief of staff Sami
Anan, was arrested and halted his presidential bid after the
army accused him of running for office without permission.
Even before campaigning officially begun, the United
Nations, rights groups and opposition figures criticised the
run-up as compromised by arrests, intimidation of opponents and
a nomination process stacked in favour of the incumbent.
The Civil Democratic Movement, an opposition political
coalition, sharply criticised Sisi on February 2 for a speech in
which he warned off anyone seeking to challenge his rule and
said the events of 2011, which toppled longtime ruler Hosni
Mubarak, would never happen again.
The movement called the speech an attempt to spread fear
that undermined the integrity of electoral competition.
In a letter to US President Donald Trump's foreign policy
team, the Working Group on Egypt, a bipartisan group of US foreign policy specialists, said the "sham election" would take
place against a backdrop of massive human rights abuses.
"We urge you not to treat this election as a legitimate
expression of the Egyptian people's will and to withhold praise
or congratulations," it said.
It said Sisi was expected to have his supporters in
parliament propose amendments to the constitution to remove
presidential term limits. Sisi has said he will not seek a third
term in office.