Egypt’s presidential election goes normally amid high turnout: NEA

CAIRO – 17 March 2018: Egyptian expatriates’ voting in the presidential election goes smoothly on the second day in a row, National Election Authority (NEA) Spokesperson Mahmoud al-Sherif said in a press conference on Saturday.

The highest electoral turnout was observed in the Gulf States, he added, noting that the NEA is in regular contact with all embassies and consulates worldwide.

The spokesperson said that the authority has not received any complaints or irregularities yet on the two days of the voting.

“Some expatriates could not ballot their vote in the presidential election as their names are not added to the voter database,” Foreign Minister Deputy Hamdi Louza said the conference. He added that the number of unregistered people is being collected to solve their problems.

In response to a question saying that some Egyptian expats could not vote in Qatar on Friday, Louza said that the Foreign Ministry did not receive any obstacles hindering expats’ voting in Qatar on the two days.

On Friday, Egyptian Minister of Manpower Mohamed Saafan said in a statement that some Egyptian expatriates could not vote in Doha as Qatari concerned authorities could provide the Egyptian expats with buses to transfer them to the Complex of Embassies in order to vote in the presidential election. However, the NEA denied what has been stated in the Minister’s remarks. Since May 2017, Egypt, along with three Gulf States, has severed their ties with Qatar over accusation of “supporting terrorist groups target those countries.”

On Thursday evening, Egyptian expatriates started to cast their vote in the election worldwide to choose between incumbent President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi and his only rival, Moussa Mostafa Moussa, al-Ghad party’s chairperson.

The election is being conducting in 139 embassies and consulates across 129 countries according to data from the NEA. Consulates and embassies in different countries officially opened their doors on Friday at 9:00 a.m. local time in each country.

This is the third presidential election to be held since the January 25 Revolution in 2011; a run-off round, if needed, is scheduled to take place in April.

The government and media outlets in Egypt have urged voters to head to the polls on the second day of the country's presidential election, amid a sign of a higher-than-expected turnout in the balloting on the first day.

Sixty million eligible voters at home are due to cast their ballots in the country's 27 governorates starting March 26 until 28.