Sabbahi: Voter turnout numbers insult Egyptians’ intelligence

Presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi said in a press conference Thursday that he did not trust the voter turnout numbers circulated by state authorities.

After three days of voting, in which the media was awash with reports that voter participation was dramatically low, the Presidential Election Commission (PEC) declared on Thursday that turnout reached 47.3 percent.

“I say to the people whom I respect: We discredit these numbers, we will not give credibility to the declared turnout numbers. These numbers are an insult to Egyptians’ intelligence,” the Nasserist politician told his supporters at his campaign headquarters, eliciting a round of applause.

The PEC’s surprise decision on Tuesday night to keep the polls open for a third day on Wednesday, mostly due to low turnout, provoked doubts as to the credibility of the electoral process. Activists called on Sabbahi to withdraw from the race, but his campaign chose to stop at withdrawing its observers from the polls on Wednesday.

“We had to withdraw our observers for fear of their safety, but we couldn’t withdraw from the election for fear of the country’s safety,” Sabbahi said.

Despite what he called “dangerous violations documented by the campaign,” Sabbahi said those irregularities would not affect the overall results of the polls.

“There were some polling stations where we got zero votes. They did not even count the vote of the campaign observer present at the polling station,” he explained.

Indirectly referring to widespread support for his rival and presumptive winner of the presidential race, Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Sabbahi said he would respect the public opinion as expressed in the polls, but would refuse any position offered to him in the executive office.

Defining himself as an opposition figure who would work “to build a strong democratic movement,” Sabbahi promised to continue work on his campaign platform, which focused on improving the lives of Egypt’s poor. 

“We will not fear terrorism, and we will not fear vicious oppression, because we believe in the people’s right to be set free from both fears,” Sabbahi concluded.