Defeated presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahi called president-elect Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi on Tuesday evening following the official announcement of the election results which confirmed the former army chief's victory, El-Sisi's campaign announced. Sabahi congratulated El-Sisi and wished him luck in the next period, a statement on El-Sisi's official Facebook page read. The statement also said that during the conversation Sabahi prayed to God to aid El-Sisi in doing what is good for Egypt and its people. Egypt's Presidential Elections Commission (PEC) announced on Tuesday that El-Sisi is Egypt's new president, confirming that he won 23.78 million votes (96.91 percent) in the 26-28 May election. Sabahi took a modest 757,511 of the votes (3.9 percent), less than the amount of spoilt votes, which reached 1,040,608 ballots. The turnout was 47.5 percent. Although the results were officially announced on Tuesday, El-Sisi's victory was known since the early hours of Thursday 29 May, as judges at polling station announced the results following a preliminary vote count. Sabahi held a press conference last Thursday in which he accepted his defeat. He also spoke of several violations that he says his campaign faced during the election, including his campaign representatives being restricted, attacked and detained, as well as suspicions of forgery and El-Sisi's representatives being allowed to campaign inside polling stations. During the press conference, Sabahi did not congratulate El-Sisi on his win. http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/102895.aspx
