Sisi wins big in Egypt polls

Supporters of Egyptian presidential candidate and former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi wave Egyptian flags as they celebrate in a street in Cairo on late Wednesday, after preliminary election results showed he won with an overwhelming majority. Photo: AFP

Ex-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has scored a crushing presidential election triumph and consolidated the military's grip, 11 months after the overthrow of the only Egyptian president not drawn from its ranks.
Ninety-six percent of voters, at least 21 million Egyptians, chose Sisi, who deposed elected Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, with ballots counted from all but a handful of 352 stations, state television reported yesterday.
Sisi's only electoral rival, leftist leader Hamdeen Sabbahi, won less than four percent, according to the preliminary results.
The longtime opposition figure conceded defeat yesterday but cast doubt on the estimated turnout figure of 47 percent after calls for a high participation rate as a sign of legitimacy.
Ahead of the final results due within a week, hundreds of Sisi supporters took to the streets on Wednesday night to celebrate, waving Egyptian flags, setting off fireworks and honking car horns.
Sisi, who retired from the army to run for office, becomes Egypt's fifth president from the military, reasserting the institution's grip on politics in the Arab world's most populous nation.
The military has always formed the backbone of political life in Egypt and the institution has provided its leaders ever since army officers toppled the monarchy in 1952.
The only exception was Morsi, elected a year after the fall of Mubarak, himself a former air force commander.
"Few would have imagined that... three years after Mubarak's toppling, a field marshall, a new pharaoh, would be elected again with 96 percent, without even unveiling a programme and without campaigning," said analyst Karim Bitar.