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Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi received a third term as leader of the Middle East’s most populous country, officials said, after the counting of votes in the elections held from December 10 to 12 was completed.

The National Elections Authority said on Monday that Sisi received 89.6 percent of the votes.

The head of the authority, Hazem Badawi, said that the participation rate reached an “unprecedented” 66.8 percent of voters.

More than 39 million Egyptians cast their votes for Sisi, the former army chief who has ruled the most populous Arab country for a decade.

The vote, the outcome of which was never in doubt, was held at a time when Egypt was dealing with various crises, including the war between Israel and Hamas in neighboring Gaza and the worst economic crisis the country has ever seen.

There is no serious opposition

Despite Egypt’s pain, a decade-long crackdown on dissent has eliminated any serious opposition to Sisi, the fifth president to leave the army since 1952.

Sisi was running against three other candidates, none of whom were prominent. The most prominent candidate ended his election campaign, complaining about the obstruction of his campaign and the arrest of dozens of his supporters.

Hazem Omar, who leads the Republican People’s Party, received 4.5 percent of the votes in second place.

Next came Farid Zahran, leader of the left-leaning Egyptian Social Democratic Party, and Abdel-Sanad Al-Yamama of the Wafd Party, a century-old but relatively marginal party.

Sisi is now scheduled to serve his third — and final, according to the constitution — term in office, starting in April.

Tightening the grip on power

The results strengthened the power of Sisi, which he seized after the overthrow of the country’s first popularly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, in 2013. He was re-elected in 2018. In both previous elections, he won 97% of the vote.

Al-Sisi extended the presidential term from four to six years, and amended the constitution to raise the maximum limit for successive term terms from two to three years.

Under his rule, Egypt imprisoned thousands of political prisoners, and while the presidential pardon commission released about 1,000 prisoners in one year, human rights groups say three to four times that number were arrested during the same period.

His supporters credit him with engineering the return of calm to the country after the chaos that followed the 2011 uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.