The National Elections Authority in Egypt announced on Monday that presidential elections will be held in December, against the backdrop of a deep economic crisis in the country.

The head of the authority, Walid Hamza, said in a press conference that the presidential elections will be held over a period of three days, from December 10 to 12, that is, nearly four months before the end of the current term of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi at the beginning of next April.

The Egyptian President, who has been in power in the country since 2014, has not yet announced his intention to run for a third term, but it is almost certain, according to analysts.

Observers believe that bringing forward the date of the presidential elections is linked to harsh economic measures that the Egyptian authorities may be forced to take early next year to confront the economic crisis, especially the problem of foreign debt ($165 billion), the installments of which must be paid in the coming months at a time when it is suffering from a shortage of foreign exchange.

Egyptians are already suffering from a decline in their purchasing power with the rise in inflation, which reached a new record in August, reaching nearly 40%.

In recent months, Egypt has witnessed a decline in the value of the pound against foreign currencies by approximately 50 percent.
So far, only one opposition candidate has begun an electoral campaign to run against Sisi, and that is former member of parliament Ahmed Al-Tantawi, who has not stopped denouncing the "crimes" committed by the security services against his supporters and campaign members, at least 35 of whom were recently arrested.
Al-Tantawi, who was known for his sharp criticism of the authorities in Parliament, also revealed that his mobile phone had been under surveillance since September 2021 after Citizen Lab in Toronto confirmed that a spy program had been used to hack his phone.
Another opposition figure, Hisham Qasim, head of the Free Movement (a coalition of liberal opposition parties), was recently sentenced to six months in prison, which deprives him of any possibility of participating in the electoral process.