Egypt's President Al-Sisi unsurprisingly re-elected for a third term in office

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will serve a third six-year term in office after being unsurprisingly re-elected with 89.6% of the vote, at a time when Egypt is going through the worst economic crisis in its history. 

The outcome of the election, which took place from 10-12 December, came as no surprise in the country, the Arab world's most populous with 106 million people. 

The head of the electoral authority, Hazem Badawy, said there was an "unprecedented" turnout of 66.8 per cent out of a total of 67 million voters, of whom more than 39 million voted for Al-Sisi. 

The 69-year-old president, a former armed forces chief, has led Egypt for a decade and will begin his term in office in April. 

According to the constitution, it should be his last. He lengthened the presidential term from four to six years and amended the constitution to extend his term limit from two to three consecutive terms. 

He faced three relatively unknown contenders: Hazem Omar of the Republican People's Party, who came second with 4.5% of the vote; Farid Zahran, leader of the leftist Egyptian Social Democratic Party; and Abdel Sanad Yamama of the century-old Wafd party. 

Al-Sisi has been in power since he overthrew elected Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013. He won 96% of the vote in the 2014 and 2018 elections. 

For 10 years, the crackdown on the opposition eliminated any serious competition for Al-Sisi, the fifth president to come from the army ranks since 1952. Thousands of opponents ended up in jail during his tenure. 

The opposition had managed to gain momentum this year, but media and public attention was focused on the Gaza war, unleashed after a bloody attack by the Islamist Hamas movement in Israel on 7 October. 

The elections also took place in the midst of an economic crisis, with inflation at 40%, a 50% devaluation of the currency and the elimination of public subsidies under pressure from the International Monetary Fund. 

Two thirds of Egyptians live below the poverty line. 

A large number of Egyptians who support Al-Sisi believe that he succeeded in restoring calm to the country after the chaos following the 2011 'revolution' and the fall of Hosni Mubarak after 30 years in power.