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Sisi's camouflage campaign unravels in election's final hours

Despite his imminent victory, the mirage campaign of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and his supporters was shown to be a failure by the embarrassingly low voter turnout.
A soldier and policeman wait for voters at a polling station in the El Sayda Zeinab area on the third day of voting in the Egyptian presidential election in Cairo, May 28, 2014. Voting in Egypt's presidential election was slow on Wednesday after polling was extended for a third day in an attempt to boost turnout, raising questions about the level of support for the man forecast to win, former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.   REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh (EGYPT - Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS CIVIL UNREST) - RTR3

For those following the Egyptian media in the weeks leading up to the presidential elections, the sense that Egypt was about to have a god as its next president was inescapable.

In televised interviews with Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, journalists would not only avoid pressing Sisi on any issue, they would respond to all his answers with complete awe, acting at times as if his evasion of questions represented a silence that spoke louder than words. In Sisi's final interview, media personality Naila Omara even told him that she would be “afraid to be questioned by him on Judgment Day.” These media reports were propaganda in its lowest form and the only campaigning Sisi engaged in — the only campaigning that he needed, his supporters enthusiastically claimed.

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