Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has been elected president of Egypt for the third time. Election officials in the Middle East’s most populous country declared him the winner after counting the votes on Monday (December 18). Aljazeera news.

According to the National Election Authority, al-Sisi was elected with 89.6 percent of the votes in the elections held on December 10 to 12. He got more than 39 million votes.

The head of the organization, Hazem Badaoui, said that 66.8 percent of the votes were cast in the election, which is unprecedented.

Al-Sisi has been in power in Egypt for the past decade. He contested against three candidates in this election. But none of them were heavyweight candidates. The best-known of the three candidates withdrew from the election citing campaign obstruction and the arrest of dozens of supporters.

Hazem Omar, al-Sisi’s closest rival in the election, received 4.5 percent of the vote. He voted from the Republican People’s Party. Apart from this, Farid Zahran, the leader of the left-wing Egyptian Social Democratic Party, and Abdel-Sanad Yamama of the Wafd Party won the third and fourth place.

In 2013, Egypt’s most popular president, Mohamed Morsi, was overthrown by a military coup, and former army chief Al-Sisi came to power. Then in 2018 he was re-elected president. He won the previous two elections with 97 percent of the vote. Al-Sisi will start the new term next April.