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Sisi leads by 97% in Egypt’s early vote count

Arab World Materials 29 May 2014 02:23 (UTC +04:00)
Egypt’s former military chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi appeared on Wednesday headed for a landslide victory in the country’s presidential election, Alarabiya reported.
Sisi leads by 97% in Egypt’s early vote count

Egypt's former military chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi appeared on Wednesday headed for a landslide victory in the country's presidential election, Alarabiya reported.

Partial results at 7 pm GMT showed el-Sisi leading with 97.7 percent of the vote ahead of his sole rival, leftist lawmaker Hamdeen Sabahi, who appeared to concede defeat even before the end of the count.

"We respect the people's will in choosing Egypt's president," an official in Sabahi's election campaign was quoted as saying.

Earlier, Sabahi's team said it had filed a complaint to the Presidential Elections Commission about "irregularities" it said threatened the credibility of the vote.

The early results come after authorities in Egypt rushed to rescue the country's presidential election from low voter turnout.

Few people trickled to the polls Wednesday even after the balloting was extended for a third day.

Tareq al-Shibl, a member of the election committee, was quoted by Al-Ahram newspaper as saying that more than 21 million people voted, or nearly 39 percent of an electorate of 54 million.

That was well below the nearly 52 percent in the 2012 election won by Mohammed Mursi, the Islamist president Sisi ousted a year ago.

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