Cairo: Egyptians began voting on Monday in a presidential election set to deliver an easy win for incumbent Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, with turnout the main focus after all serious opposition withdrew complaining of repression.

Polls will be open for three days and Sisi, a former military commander, has urged Egyptians to go and vote, hinting that he sees the election as a referendum on his four-year rule.

While many Egyptians see the US-allied leader as vital to stability in a country where unrest since 2011 has hurt the economy, critics say he has presided over Egypt’s worst ever crackdown on dissent and have dubbed the vote a charade.

Sisi, 63, who led the military’s overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically elected President Mohamed Mursi in 2013, has cast his bid for a second term as a vote for stability and security.

But a lower-than-expected turnout could suggest Sisi lacks a mandate to take more of the tough steps needed to revive the economy, which struggled after the 2011 revolution drove away tourists and foreign investors, both sources of hard currency.

Early on Monday, dozens of people queued up to vote in and around Cairo, but not in great numbers. Reuters correspondents saw voters waiting outside schools converted into polling stations.

‘We’re coming to support President Sisi. Anyone who doesn’t participate in the vote is a traitor,’ 76-year-old Saad Shahata, a civil servant, said at a polling station in Monofiya province north of Cairo.

Sisi’s sole challenger in the March 26-28 vote is Moussa Mostafa Moussa, a longtime Sisi supporter widely dismissed as a dummy candidate: Moussa’s Ghad party had actually endorsed Sisi for a second term before he emerged as a last-minute challenger.

Moussa dismisses accusations he is being used to present a false sense of competition, and the electoral commission says it will ensure the vote is fair and transparent.

An editorial in state-owned newspaper al-Ahram acknowledged the narrow choice for voters but suggested the mere holding of the ballot signalled Egypt was regaining its strength in the face of current domestic and foreign threats.

‘The importance of presidential elections this time is not fierce competition or a real (electoral) battle, but a message to the world that Egypt is on its way through a recovery phase,’ it said.