Official results of Egypt's 2014 presidential elections, in which ex-army chief Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has recorded a sweeping victory, will be announced on 3 or 4 June, a member of the country's Presidential Elections Commission (PEC) has said. PEC member Tarek Shebl told Reuters' Aswat Masriya on Thursday that the voter turnout in the three-day poll that concluded on Wednesday reached 48 percent. El-Sisi garnered approximately 93 percent of the ballots, preliminary results show. Leftist politician Hamdeen Sabahi, El-Sisi's single rival, gained a modest three percent, while 3.7 percent of the ballots cast were declared void. In earlier comments to Al-Ahram's Arabic news website, Shebl had said that almost 25 of the country's 54 million electorate (almost 46 percent) have cast their ballots, and that results would be announced on 1 or 2 June. Voting was scheduled to end on Tuesday, but was extended for an additional day by authorities in a surprise move that sparked doubts over the integrity of the electoral process. A PEC official said on Tuesday – the day on which the presidential poll was originally due to conclude – that turnout was around 37 percent, well below the 52 percent of voters who cast their ballots in the 2012 election which deposed president Mohamed Morsi had won. The PEC will receive appeals from the two contenders on 30-31 May, to be examined on 1 June, Shebl said. http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/102475.aspx
