Egyptian citizens headed to polling stations across the country on Wednesday for the third and final day of voting in Egypt's 2018 presidential elections. Voting started from 9am in 13,706 polling stations in all 26 governorates, with the process due to end at 9pm on Wednesday. Vote counting is set to start after the polls close on Wednesday night.
Two candidates are running in the elections; incumbent President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and Ghad Party leader Moussa Mostafa Moussa. The winner will serve as Egypt's leader for the next four years. The results are scheduled to be announced on 2 April, unless there is a run-off, which would take place on 24-26 April.
On Tuesday, the Egypt’s National Elections Authority (NEA) said the first two days of voting had gone smoothly across the country, with initial indications suggesting high turnout.
The highest voter participation was registered in the governorates of Cairo, Giza, Qalioubiya, Assiut and Aswan, the NEA said, as well as in Alexandria, which witnessed a terrorist car-bombing on Saturday targetting the governorate's security director. Two policemen died in the attack, but the security director emerged unscathed.
The NEA also reported high turnout in North Sinai, where Egypt's security forces have been continuing their Operation Sinai 2018 counter-terrorism effort. The high turnout indicates that the security problems have not affected the election process, the NEA said.
Fifty-four local and nine international NGOs have been authorized by the NEA to monitor the elections. "No complaints have been received regarding the elections, either by judges or by voters, on the first day of elections," the NEA said on Tuesday.
The authority also announced on Tuesday that it has cancelled a one-hour break at all polling stations across the state, from 3pm to 4pm, due to complaints from state employees that they were unable to vote as the break coincided with the end of their working hours.
The election process is being supervised at polling stations by 18,000 judges, with tens of thousands of army and police personnel deployed to secure polling stations.
On the first day of the elections, a number of state officials and public figures cast their ballots in the elections, including Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, Coptic Pope Tawadros II, and Sheikh Ahmed El-Tayeb, the grand imam of Al-Azhar. The two contenders in the election, El-Sisi and Moussa, were also among the first to vote on Monday.
Around 59 million Egyptians are registered as eligible to vote on the NEA's database, officials have said. The largest concentrations of voters are located in Cairo, with 7.5 million voters, followed by Giza with 5.2 million, Sharqiya with 4 million, Alexandria with 3.8 million and the Nile Delta governorate of Beheira with 3.7 million voters.
In the 2014 presidential elections, in which El-Sisi won 96 percent of the vote and beat leftist politician Hamdeen Sabahi, 24.5 million out of 54 million voters took part, or 47 percent.
Ahram Online
