[The Peninsula] Ex-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sissi has scored a crushing presidential election triumph and consolidated the military's grip, 11 months after the overthrow of the only Egyptian president not drawn from its ranks.Ninety-six percent of voters, at least 21 million Egyptians, chose Sisi, who deposed elected Islamist president Mohammed Mursi, with ballots counted from all but a handful of 352 stations, state television
... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
reported Thursday.
Sisi's only electoral rival, leftist leader Hamdeen Sabbahi, won less than four percent, according to the preliminary results.
The longtime opposition figure conceded defeat on Thursday but cast doubt on the estimated turnout figure of 47 percent after calls for a high participation rate as a sign of legitimacy.
Ahead of the final results due within a week, hundreds of Sisi supporters erupted into the streets on Wednesday night to celebrate, waving Egyptian flags, setting off fireworks and honking car horns.
"It's a victory for stability," said Tahra Khaled, among the crowd in Cairo's Tahrir Square, nerve centre of the mass protests that forced autocratic president Hosni Mubarak
...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011...
to step down in 2011.
Sisi, who retired from the army to run for office, becomes Egypt's fifth president from the military, reasserting the institution's grip on politics in the Arab world's most populous nation.
The military has always formed the backbone of political life in Egypt and the institution has provided its leaders ever since army officers toppled the monarchy in 1952.