Expat run-off voting results in Saudi to be announced Monday

Ahram Online, Sunday 10 Jun 2012

After a week of polling, the results of the run-off round in Egypt's largest expatriate constituency will be announced tomorrow

The Egyptian Embassy in Riyadh will officially announce Monday the voting results of Egyptian expatriates in Saudi Arabia in the run-off round of Egypt's presidential elections.

Saudi Arabia is home to Egypt's largest expatriate constituency, with over 261,000 registered voters.

The embassy announced Sunday that the total number of votes in Riyadh and Jeddah, the two polling centres in Saudi Arabia for Egyptian expats, had reached around 147,000.

The embassy has sent 2000 votes to the Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission to be verified, based on complaints from presidential candidate representatives who were monitoring the polling process in Jeddah and Riyadh.

Official results from embassies and consulates in several other countries have been issued throughout Sunday.

Voting in the run-off round for Egyptians living abroad officially ended Saturday evening after one week of polling.

There are between 6.7 million and 10 million Egyptians living and working abroad, according to the latest estimates. Of those, approximately 587,000 around the world registered to vote in Egypt's first post-Mubarak presidential elections. Over 50 per cent of that number live in Saudi Arabia.

In the first voting round, the Muslim Brotherhood's presidential candidate, Mohamed Morsi, topped the vote in Saudi Arabia.

Since none of the 13 candidates in the first round garnered a clear majority (over 50 per cent), the top two candidates — the Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi and Mubarak-era prime minister Ahmed Shafiq — will compete against one another in a final vote. Polls open in Egypt 16-17 June.

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