The Chairman of Egypt’s National Election Authority has announced that the country will go to the polls in December, 2023.
According to Waleed Hamza, the election will take place on December 10-12, 2023. In the event that no candidate secures more than 50% of the votes cast, a runoff will be held on January 8-10, 2024.
Hamza added that Egyptian expatriates will exercise their franchise on December 1-3, 2023 and in the runoff on Jan. 5-7, 2024.
Incumbent President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is yet to announce his candidacy.
Due to constitutional amendments, passed in a referendum in 2019, el-Sisi can stand for a third term.
The amendments also extended the length of presidential terms to six years from four, allowing him to stay in office until at least 2030.
Meanwhile, a number of politicians have already announced their bids to run for the post of presidency,
Opposition politician, Ahmed al-Tantawi, an ex-lawmaker, has announced that he will run.
He accused security agencies of arresting some of his supporters.
He also claimed that authorities have spied on him using advanced technology.
Farid Zahran, head of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party; Abdel-Sanad Yamama, head of the Wafd Party; and Gameela Ismail, head of the liberal Constitution Party (Dostour Party) have also announced their bids.
However, none of the candidates poses a serious challenge to el-Sisi, who has been in power since 2014 – a year after overthrowing the country’s first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.
He was declared winner of both the 2014 and 2018 elections with 97 percent of the vote.
In 2018, he faced just one opponent, after the main challenger was arrested and other hopefuls pulled out, citing intimidation.
El-Sisi’s governance has been characterized with a major crackdown on dissent.
Thousands of government critics have been silenced or jailed, mainly Islamists but also many prominent secular activists.
According to activists, tens of thousands have been jailed, often without fair trials, and that the crackdown has continued despite the pardoning of some high-profile prisoners and the launch of a national political dialogue.
Moreover, the economic situation in the country is bleak, as Egypt’s currency has lost half its value since March 2022, and as inflation reached an all-time high of 39.7 percent in August.
National Dialogue Calls For Reforms
Last week, the board of trustees of National Dialogue, a forum created to help chart Egypt’s roadmap through recommendations, called for reforms to ensure a “multicandidate and competitive” presidential election.
The trustees demanded in a statement that all candidates and opposition parties be allowed to interact directly with the public.
“The state institutions and agencies are required to keep an equal distance from all presidential candidates so as to safeguard their legal and constitutional rights as well as equal opportunity to all of them,” the trustees said.
In addition, the board of trustees also called on the government to accelerate the release of critics held in pretrial detention and to amend the relevant legislation, which it said established “a sort of penal punishment without a court verdict.”
Election results are expected to be announced on December 23, 2023.
The National Elections Authority revealed that if a run-off takes place, final results should be announced latest on January 16, 2024.
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