Sisi sweeps to victory as rival concedes

Leftist candidate Hamdeen Sabahi conceded defeat Thursday after preliminary results from Egypt's presidential election gave ex-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi 96 percent of the vote.

Speaking at a news conference, Sabahi said "I accept my defeat and respect the people's choice" in the three-day election that ended on Wednesday.

Sabahi received 3.7 percent of the votes counted, while 4.1 percent were invalid, according to preliminary results. 

The former member of parliament, jailed 17 times during his political career, said he will not take any position in the future government, but will stand in opposition, according to reports from his concession press conference. He also said he believed the election had been marred by violations and questioned the validity of the preliminary turnout figures.

Sisi, who rode in on a wave of support from Egyptians who said they believe he will restore stability and revive the economy after three years of turmoil, had been expected to win in landslide.

Preliminary results show that 47 percent of eligible votes, down from 53 percent when Mohammed Morsi was elected in 2012, turned out for the vote. 

Officials from the EU monitoring mission sent to observe the elections declared the three-day process broadly “in line with the law”, but conducted in “an environment falling short of constitution principles."

"Freedoms of association, assembly and expression are areas of concern, including in the context of this election,” said mission chief, Mario David. 

'No real way to verify'

"Ultimately, we have no real way to verify (government) turnout numbers" or Sisi's victory margin, Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution's Saban Center wrote on Twitter.

He pointed to the absence of "parallel counts and not enough (international) monitors".

David Butter, associate fellow at the foreign affairs think-tank Chatham House, said election results were not nearly as high as what Sisi’s supporters had hoped.

“While there is an enthusiastic basis of support for Sisi, it’s still a minority," Butter said, "so the messy handling of the extra day and trying to get the extra votes out has left the impression that there was a kind of desperation to hit a minimum number on the turnout, which does cast a cloud over the legitimacy of the election as a whole.”

The army-installed government and Sisi called for a high turnout to endorse the military coup and subsequent designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation.

After the first two days of voting, preliminary figures released by the election commission on Wednesday showed voter turnout at 37 percent, but other estimates put the figure significantly lower with opposition groups say it was closer to 12 percent. Voting due to end on Tuesday was extended by 24 hours, however, in a last-minute decision reportedly made to boost voter numbers. 

Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb warned voters on Tuesday that if they failed to cast a vote and did not have an excuse for abstaining, they would be fined up to 500 Egyptian pounds (US $70), an amount nearly double a month's salary for much of the population.

There has since been conflicting statements about the extension.

According to pro-government newspaper al-Ahram, the Presidential Elections Commission announced the decision to extend voting to assist the “large swathes of people” who had been unable to cast their ballots during the scheduled hours. 

Sabahi strongly objected to the extension of the voting period announced on Tuesday, but remained in the race, he said, to pave the way for democracy.

"With a message of love and hope to those asking me to withdraw, I am telling them that withdrawal is beneath us. We have entered a challenge and we will continue in it until the end. There are millions by our calculations who gave us their votes and didn’t let us down, I can’t let them down,” Sabahi said in a video released by his campaign on Wednesday. 

Sisi supporters took to the streets on Wednesday evening waving Egyptian flags, setting off fireworks and honking their car horns.

"It's a victory for stability," said Tahra Khaled, who joined the crowd celebrating in the iconic Tahrir Square, the nerve centre of mass protests that toppled strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

As updated results and voter turnouts were released, commentators were quick to post on social media sites with some highlighting the significant number of spoiled ballots cast.

'It raises questions'

On Wednesday, several Cairo polling stations visited by AFP were practically deserted.

"They didn't get enough votes, so they extended polling into a third day," complained filmmaker Mohamed Ali Hagar, who said he would stay away regardless.

The extension of polling casts doubt on the vote's credibility, experts said.

It "raises more questions about the independence of the electoral commission, the impartiality of the government, and the integrity of Egypt's electoral process," said Democracy International, a US-based observer mission.

That echoed criticism from Sabahi, who said on Tuesday that the extension raises "questions... about the integrity of the process".

"On a national level, the state has argued that the roadmap is backed by a majority of Egyptian people," said Hisham Hellyar, associate fellow at The Royal United Services Institute, referring to the military-installed authorities' plan to return Egypt to elected rule.

'Death certificate for coup'

The Muslim Brotherhood, which had championed a boycott of the election, hailed the lower turnout.

"The great Egyptian people have given a new slap to the military coup's roadmap and... written the death certificate of the military coup," said its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party.

All of the movement's main leaders are now in jail or exile, and Morsi himself is being tried on charges that could carry the death penalty.

Prominent activists behind the uprising that ousted long-time strongman Mubarak in 2011 had also called for a boycott, charging Sisi was a new autocrat in the making.

Sisi's ouster of Morsi on 3 July last year triggered the worst peacetime bloodshed in Egypt's recent history, but the former army chief has vowed to stamp out the violence.

He has said "true democracy" in the Arab world's most populous nation will take a couple of decades.