Cairo (AFP) - Ex-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was assured Thursday of an overwhelming victory in Egypt's presidential election, securing 96.2 of the vote with most of the ballots counted.
At least 21 million voters, or 96.2 percent chose the retired field marshal, who deposed the elected Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last July, with the ballots counted from 312 of 352 counting stations, state television reported.
His victory had never been in doubt with the main Islamist opposition crushed since Morsi's ouster. Sisi's only electoral rival, leftist Hamdeen Sabbahi, received 3.8 percent of the votes counted.
Sisi rode on a wave of support for a potential strongman who can restore stability after several years of tumult.
Hundreds of his supporters took to the streets waving Egyptian flags, setting off fire works and honking their car horns.
"It's a victory for stability," said Tahra Khaled, who joined the crowd celebrating in the iconic Tahrir Square, the nerve centre of mass protests that toppled strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
The army-installed government and Sisi were eyeing a large turnout as an endorsement of the overthrow of Islamist president last year, and the subsequent crackdown on his supporters.
Voting had been scheduled to end on Tuesday, but was extended for an extra day in a last minute decision that sparked protests from Sabbahi, a leftist politician who came in third in the 2012 election Morsi won.
An election committee official said turnout has "surpassed 25 million (46 percent)" out of almost 54 million registered voters, the official Al-Ahram newspaper reported on its website.
The move to extend polling for a day fuelled criticism of an election already marred by a deadly crackdown on Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood movement
http://news.yahoo.com/egypts-sisi-wins-overwhelming-majority-084505473.html
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