Update: Sabbahi campaign says overseas vote is not conclusive

Spokesperson for the Sabbahi campaign, Amr Badr told privately owned Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper that the results of expatriate voting are not an indication of the final election outcome, citing the results of the 2012 presidential elections, in which Sabbahi came fifth in expatriate voting and then proceeded to come third in the final election results.

“The race is still going. There are 53 million eligible citizens in Egypt and they’re the ones who will determine the winner, not the 314,000 expatriates,” he said.

Badr claimed that expatriate votes are influenced by personal interest and the need for stability, which, according to him, fluctuate according to the affiliations of businessmen and investors’ interests in Egypt. He added that some expatriates are afraid that if they vote for Sabbahi, they might be sent back to Egypt.    

“The media during Mubarak’s regime succeeded at delivering the wrong information to expatriates, that there’s a bomb outside every house in Egypt. That’s why Egyptians rushed to vote for the candidate who will fight terrorism and maintain security,” he elaborated.

Badr said that Sabbahi’s campaign members have not succumbed to desperation, adding that his popularity is constantly growing because he has adopted a program based on social justice and food security.

However, he accused some media outlets of bias towards Sisi, by “using the results of expatriate voting to their benefit, and pushing people to think the battle is over.”

From initial counts, expatriate voting appears to overwhelmingly favor Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, another indication that the former defense minister is likely to win next week’s presidential election by a considerable margin.

Sisi’s campaign began announcing vote counts from around the world, releasing numbers that pointed toward a huge margin in his favor.

Expatriate voting ended Monday, the High Elections Commission said in a press release. The committee added that expatriate turnout was at 60 percent. It said some 315,000 Egyptians voted abroad, more than the 314,329 that voted abroad in the first round of the 2012 election.

The Sisi campaign said that 49,194 of Egyptians in the Emirates voted for Sisi, out of 52,256 voters. In the United States, 13,745 voted for Sisi out of the 14,593 that voted. In Kuwait, 62,527 out of 65,330 followed suit.

Turkey was a notable exception, where Sisi’s margin of victory was much smaller, although the number of voters there was also much smaller. In Istanbul, 177 out of the 320 that voted did so in favor for Sisi, and in Ankara, 67 out of the 124 that went to the polls cast their vote for the former defense minister.

The number of invalid ballots was negligible around the world. Some Egyptians have pushed to invalidate their own ballots rather than boycott to express their opposition to the choices or process in this year’s election.

The general committee for expatriates, a branch of the High Elections Commission, is scheduled to announce the final results of expatriate voting on Wednesday, including the total number of voters, and the number of votes each candidate received.

The High Elections Commission released a statement on Tuesday saying that vote counting would take place at the headquarters of Egyptian diplomatic missions around the world in the presence of representatives of candidates and media outlets, as well as local, foreign and international civil society organizations previously authorized to monitor the process. 

An anonymous military source told Al-Masry Al-Youm that the Armed Forces would start moving across Egypt to secure voting stations on Sunday in anticipation of the beginning of the elections on Monday.

The source claimed that the numbers of military personnel involved would exceed those who participated in securing the referendum last January, adding that all military officers and personnel still hold the power of arrest according to the law, which gives them the right to arrest all those who “start riots or attempt to hinder the voting process.”

Those arrested will be referred to general prosecution, the source added, except those who assault military personnel assigned to securing stations, who will be referred to military courts.