Preliminary results have reportedly revealed that former military chief Abdul Fattah al-Sisi is heading towards a huge victory in Egypt's presidential election.
After 2,000 of 12,000 polling stations reported their results, Sisi had gained about 90 percent of the vote, but turnout is expected to be lower than 45 percent despite a massive push to get more people into polling stations with many groups having boycotted the vote.
According to the BBC, retired field marshal Sisi overthrew President Mohammed Morsi last July and has overseen a bloody cleansing of the former president's Muslim Brotherhood movement in which more than 1,400 people have been killed and 16,000 detained.
Democracy campaigner Nagy Kamel said that he does not believe that these are real elections while the Brotherhood said that it would boycott the vote, as did many liberal and secular activist groups.
The only other candidate in the election Hamdeen Sabahi said earlier that his team had recorded 'violations' in the voting process, but rejected calls from his supporters to withdraw from the elections, saying that it was not in the interest of the Egyptians.
Meanwhile reports suggested many polling stations were almost deserted on Wednesday, despite the military-backed authorities extending voting to a third day in the hope of boosting turnout.
Analysts have said that the low turnout damages Sisi's authority before the former military chief takes office, as he had aimed to get 40 million of 54 million registered voters to the polling stations, to show that he had the support of the majority of Egypt, but it appears that fewer than 25 million voters have voted, the report added.
