Polling stations open on the first day of voting for the Egyptian presidential elections

Cairo, Dec 10 (EFE).- The electoral centers in Egypt opened their doors today at 9:00 a.m. local time (07:00 GMT) to vote in presidential elections that will last three days and in which President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is undisputed. favorite against three little-known rivals.

More than 67 million Egyptians, of the more than 105 million inhabitants of the African country, are called to the polls for three days in a vote whose closing is scheduled for 9:00 p.m. local time (7:00 p.m. GMT) each day, while the Results will be announced on December 18.

Around a hundred people waited for the opening of the Ahmed Orabi primary school, in the popular Cairo neighborhood of Imbaba, which opened its doors a few minutes after the stipulated time to voters, who will be able to cast their vote at more than 9,000 centers elections spread throughout the country.

Many of the voters waved Egyptian flags to the roar of popular music played through the voting center’s large speakers, while police and school organizers organized lines to access the voting stations.

According to the National Electoral Authority (ANE), some 15,000 judges have been assigned to supervise the work of the tables and carry out the recount of votes, a process that will also be monitored by 22,540 local observers, 14 international organizations and 67 diplomatic representatives from 24 embassies. accredited in Egypt.

The current president and great favorite, Abdel Fattah al Sisi, is running in these elections; Farid Zahran, head of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party (PES); Abdel Sanad Yamama, head of the Wafd Party, and Hazem Omar, of the Republican People’s Party (RPP).

These are the first elections since Al Sisi came to power in a coup d’état in 2013 in which more than two candidates participate, at a time of relative political openness given the authorities’ commitment to the “democratic transformation” of the North African country. .

In the last elections, in 2014 and 2018, Al Sisi defeated a single rival with 97% of the votes on both occasions, in elections considered a farce by the opposition.

The main unknown will be turnout, since these elections take place in the midst of a severe economic crisis marked by rampant official inflation of 38%, the loss of more than half the value of the Egyptian pound in one year and a foreign debt of more than 160,000 million dollars.

Cairo, Dec 10 (EFE).- The Egyptian elections, whose sure winner will be the current president Abdel Fattah al Sisi, can only be interpreted in an economic key, as a test of whether the Executive obtains sufficient political support to address the difficult and unpopular measures that will have to be taken to try to rescue the country from the macroeconomic abyss in which it finds itself.

Without real competition between options, the vote is seen by both Egyptians and external observers as a preliminary, formal and necessary step, but ultimately irrelevant to an inevitable barrage of crude measures to try to tackle the serious economic problems that threaten the country. country.

These are not a few: very high inflation; lack of foreign currency; public debt; currency depreciation; zero external investment and ossified industry.

Furthermore, there is the decreasing confidence in Egypt’s ability to get out of the quagmire, reflected both by the successive downgrades of its credit rating and by the difficulties for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to disburse much of the last credit it granted to the country. in the face of the obvious Egyptian non-compliance with the conditions for it.

Imminent devaluation

The first step expected is a devaluation of the Egyptian pound, the third in the last two years.

The currency arrives at the election with an approximate official value of 30.8 pounds per US dollar. On the black market, the price is approximately 50 to 1. Access to the black market, previously limited and discreet, is now increasingly widespread.

It is impossible for an ordinary citizen to buy foreign currency with Egyptian pounds through official channels.

“The speculation is that they have to devalue the pound massively. They are looking to get a flow of loans and aid and more agreements with the IMF. But so far there is no clear exit plan except a massive privatization program, which is not working either. good,” the political analyst and author of the upcoming book ‘Egypt under Sisi’, Maged Mandour, summarized to EFE.

Very critical of the president, Mandour bets that Al Sisi will not have the capacity to let the pound float in the market (as requested by the IMF), since it could reach “limits that cannot be imagined” and will bet on controlled devaluations, as usual.

What is not clear is that it will serve to console the IMF, nor to attract investors, nor to grant confidence in the currency. In fact, this is what has been tried without success until now.

Public spending

Inflation, in this context, will not be able to go down.

80% of Egyptians survive by purchasing government-subsidized bread, and cutting spending in that sector is unviable.

Public works, in its format of megaprojects in which Al Sisi spent all the money obtained through loans and concessions to boost the Egyptian economy, employs tens of thousands of people.

With a local industry close to collapse, restricted from importing basic materials, the end of construction would certify a possible scenario “of high inflation with a deep recession” and unemployment that will trigger poverty to “historic levels.”

The truth is that dozens of international companies based in Egypt comment on condition of anonymity that the difficulties are increasing, that payments are not arriving and that they are thinking of stopping or greatly reducing their actions in the country.

Mandour believes that Al Sisi will continue construction also “for political reasons,” which in turn is what has brought the country to this position in the first place.

Debt

There is also the debt, contracted during the more than ten years of Al Sisi’s mandate, which has several important maturities next year and which will have to be paid with hard currency.

Egypt has defended its ability to pay and honor its commitments, with sufficient scheduled revenues for example through the Suez Canal (one of the main revenue streams for the Egyptian economy), but rescheduling and negotiations are in sight.

From the outside it seems evident to everyone that Egypt needs help of some kind, as reflected in the recent visit of the president of the European Commission Ursula Von der Leyen, where senior officials who accompanied her dropped that the EU will put pressure on its member states and to the IMF to be lenient with Egypt and to work to “unlock” foreign private investments, especially in energy issues.

Egypt has been looking for months now to attract foreign currency through privatization of some sectors in the hands of the State, but many analysts also think that as long as the privileged situation of the military industries (which range from food production to gas stations and construction companies) is maintained, and is not seriously privatized, the necessary capital flow will never be obtained.

“There is no easy solution. Those that are, are all long-term, structural and deep and there is no escape from all the suffering. We have to talk about debt restructuring, the possibility of default, hyperinflation. All of that. It is not something that can be fixed in six months or a year, is a massive mess,” Mandour concluded.

Alvaro Mellizo