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Egypt Announces Presidential Polls


Walid Hassan Hamza, the Chairperson of Egypt's National Election Authority speaks during a press conference in Cairo regarding the upcoming presidential elections, Sept. 25, 2023.
Walid Hassan Hamza, the Chairperson of Egypt's National Election Authority speaks during a press conference in Cairo regarding the upcoming presidential elections, Sept. 25, 2023.

CAIRO — Egypt’s electoral authority Monday said the North African nation will hold its presidential election from December 10-12 and the winner will be announced on December 18.

Walid Hassan Hamza, the chairperson of Egypt's National Election Authority, NEA, said the list for presidential candidates will be finalized by November 9.

Presidential hopefuls can apply starting in October, he added. The elections now set for December originally were to be held in February 2024.

Egypt's presidential elections comes after the national currency has lost half its value since March 2022. Inflation reached an all-time high of 39.7% in August.

Despite the devaluations last year, Egyptian authorities have kept the exchange rate pegged since early this year at about 31 pounds to the U.S. dollar.

Experts had predicted that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the former army chief who has governed Egypt for nearly a decade, would set an early election date ahead of a possible switch to a flexible exchange rate that could exacerbate social tensions.

Sisi has yet to say if he will be a candidate in the election. He was first elected president in 2014 after leading a military coup that ousted elected Islamist president Mohamed Morsi. He then won the 2018 elections with a landslide against his rivals.

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