90% of presidential endorsements registered in Aswan support Sisi

Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has garnered 90 percent of the presidential endorsements cast by Aswan residents, a source at the registrar office told the privately owned Al-Shorouk newspaper on Friday.

The office has received a total of 7,457 signatures of support for presidential hopefuls in the 2014 election, with the remaining 10 percent divided between candidates Hamdeen Sabbahi, Hossam Kheirallah, Mortada Mansoura and Bothaina Kamel.

Earlier this week Sisi’s campaign said the former defense minister has received nearly half a million signatures of support for his presidency. A minimum of 25,000 endorsements is required to officially register as a candidate in the election. The ex-army chief is widely expected to dominate the polls, which open for the first round of voting on May 26-27.

His competitor in the election, left-leaning Popular Current Party founder Hamdeen Sabbahi, has registered complaints accusing state officials of bias for the Sisi campaign. On Friday, Hatem al-Balk, the official spokesperson for the Sabbahi campaign in northern Sinai, claimed that security forces stationed at registrar offices in the peninsula withdrew as soon as Sisi obtained his endorsements from the governorate.

“The security forces were available only for the Sisi campaign,” Balk told the privately owned newspaper Al-Shorouk. He also accused employees in Sinai’s registrar offices of issuing endorsements for Sisi when voters had in fact asked to endorse Sabbahi. Few employees are now left in the offices to continue taking endorsements for the self-proclaimed “revolutionary” candidate, Balk added.

On Thursday, a computer was stolen from a Damanhour registrar office. The Sabbahi campaign issued a statement condemning the theft and questioning security measures taken in the office.

Despite speculation that Sabbahi would not obtain the minimum required signatures to validate his candidacy, on Thursday his campaign said he had acquired 30,000 endorsements and more were coming in each day.