Feature: Low turnout on extended day of Egypt's presidential polls, women in lead
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E-mail Xinhua, May 29, 2014
Polls of the extended Egyptian presidential election closed on Wednesday night with a lower voter turnout, while female voters remained in the lead and topped the elections scene.
Former military chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who led the ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi last July in response to mass protests, and leftist leader Hamdeen Sabahy, who came third in the 2012 presidential elections, are the only two contestants in the race.
Most of the country's 14,000 polling stations looked relatively calm and free from crowds of voters on Wednesday compared with those in the first two voting days when the turnout hardly seemed any more impressive.
"The numbers are not that big compared to the long queues of voters in the 2012 polls that Morsi won," said Ahmed Ali, a representative of Sisi's campaign at a polling station in Giza's town of Boulak el-Dakrour, where a few voters went in and out smoothly and quietly.
With regards to eligible women, whose population accounts for about 48 percent of the 54 million voters nationwide, Ali said they represented about 80 or even 90 percent of the participant voters.
Hours before the original two-day polls closed on Tuesday, the election commission announced to extend polling for a day instead of prolonging for one hour. The sudden move drew criticism and raised questions over the "justice" of the election.
According to the commission, the decision was made to "give chance to the largest number of people to participate in the polls. " Critics, however, lashed out that it was for Sisi to get a decisive show of support with a high voter turnout.
Most Egyptian women who joined the polls are expected to vote for Sisi. The military strongman won 94.5 percent of the votes cast by over 300,000 overseas Egyptians in 124 countries last week.
Egyptian women support Sisi because they in nature yearn for security and stability for their families and children, and they dislike the rigidity of those extremist Islamists alienated by Sisi. On the other hand, in many of his speeches, Sisi effectively addressed Egyptian women and told them he would count on their votes.
With a pink ink covering her index fingertip, which is a sign that she already cast her vote, a woman in another Giza polling station said she voted for Sisi because "I like him and he is able to bring order back to the country after three years of chaos."
"My husband is upset with me because he voted for Sabahy and I voted for Sisi," said Saniya, a 40-year-old employee at a labor office. "He believes Sisi will return us to military-oriented rule like the Hosni Mubarak era, but I don't think so," she added.
Leaving an almost-vacant polling station in Maadi district in Cairo, Nermeen, a classy housewife in her 30s, untraditionally dressed in jeans and wearing shades, said she voted for Sabahy because "he is more suitable for the coming stage."
Sisi promises security and stability, but that will not happen amid crackdown on Morsi's supporters and youth activists, she said. The security forces launched harsh crackdown on pro-Morsi protestors after what the Islamists called "military coup" last July, leaving hundreds of them died and thousands of others, including many youth activists, arrested.
Like most Egyptians, Nermeen is sure that Sisi will win in the elections, "but my vote for Sabahy will at least help minimize the difference."
The comparatively low turnout seems to bother a lot of Sisi's supporters, some of whom used pickups carrying Sisi posters and flags of Egypt to tour the streets and urge people through microphones to go to polling stations and cast their votes.
In Upper Egypt's Qena province, state-run Arab Contractors Company held a march of vehicles with microphones, playing national songs and touring public places to encourage citizens to join the polls.
"The vehicle march aims to motivate all residents to take part positively in the polls," said Ahmed Mansour, the company's public relations manager. Although the cars carried Sisi's posters, Mansour said the march is not intended to direct citizens to vote for a certain candidate.
The election commission closed the polls at 9:00 p.m. local time (1800 GMT) on Wednesday. Vote counting process started right away. No official results are expected before Sunday, while the final result will be announced no later than June 5. Endi
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