Victory celebrations erupted by backers of Abdel Fattah Sisi, who easily won election as Egypt's next president, according to unofficial talllies released by his campaign early Thursday.
But the landslide win — more than 92 percent of the vote, with nearly all ballots counted — was soured by a turnout lower than his camp had hoped for, pointing to a wellspring of anger, mistrust or apathy among a large chunk of the electorate.
Moreover, Sisi's strongman image took a battering by the seemingly desperate measures the government took to badger voters into casting a ballot — keeping the polls open an extra day, declaring an impromptu national holiday, threatening substantial fines for those who stayed away and providing free transport to voters' home districts. As polling stations stood nearly empty, pro-military talk-show hosts unleashed a torrent of invective at "traitors" who failed to vote.
The turnout figure, estimated at 40% after the three-day vote ended Wednesday night, instantly proved controversial. Sisi's lone opponent, Hamdeen Sabahi, withdrew his polling monitors on the last day to protest the extension, and international observers said the government's last-minute move to keep the polls open for an unscheduled additional day raised questions about the integrity of the electoral process, including the turnout reports.
To a major extent, Sisi was a victim of inflated expectations put forth by his own camp. The turnout, in fact, resulted in a greater number of votes than were cast for now-ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2012. But in percentage terms, it was well below the 52% of the voters who took part in the runoff balloting that brought Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood to power.
The failure to hit that target carries a heavy symbolic resonance for Sisi and his backers, because the election followed a months-long buildup in which he was depicted as a universally beloved leader, destined by fate to lead Egypt out of three years of nonstop turmoil.
More importantly, the vote was meant to remove the taint of having ousted Morsi by force last July and to give a stamp of public approval to the repressive measures Sisi and the interim government have since employed to try to crush the Brotherhood. The Sisi camp had hoped to silence critics at home and abroad who maintain that after engineering the coup in the wake of huge anti-Morsi protests, he should not have been the one put forward to lead a civilian government as part of a promised democratic transition.
Sisi's decision not to wage what he called a "traditional" campaign — he made no public appearances and did not hold any debates with Sabahi — struck some voters as out of touch and arrogant. During the weeks of electioneering, Sisi opted instead for a series of television interviews with friendly interlocutors, and closed-door appearances before carefully vetted audiences who were more like focus groups.
The preliminary election results were bruising for Sabahi — he had fully expected to lose, but votes for him were outnumbered by invalid ballots, many deliberately spoiled by voters in protest — placing him third in a two-man race.
At polling places, Sisi's supporters made themselves highly visible, dancing and shouting slogans supporting him, but even before the vote, it was apparent that his backing was narrower than fervent displays of devotion suggested.
Days before the polling, the Pew Research Center released a survey that found just 54% viewed the candidate favorably, compared to 45% who did not, and that four in 10 Egyptians still held favorable views of the Brotherhood, even amid the vitriolic outpouring against the movement in state media.
In the hours after the polls closed and the preliminary tallies pointed to a resounding win, Sisi supporters staged triumphal all-night gatherings, honking car horns, waving flags and setting off fireworks. One of the celebration venues was downtown Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the 2011 revolution that swept away dictator Hosni Mubarak.
"This result wasn't what we fought for in those days," said Nada Fouad, 29, who spent days and nights protesting in the square more than three years ago, and cheered what she thought was the start of a new order. "Our revolution still has a very long way to go."
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