DHAKA: Egypt’s presidential election has been extended by one more day in an effort to boost low turnout that threatened to undermine the credibility of the vote likely to be won by the former army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

The decision followed lower-than-expected turnout in the originally two-day vote that was due to end on Tuesday night.

Electoral commission chief Abdel Aziz Salman put the turnout by the end of the second day at about 37 percent of the 53 million electorate, the official MENA news agency reported, says Al Jazeera.

The military-backed government had launched a determined effort to get people to vote, declaring Tuesday a public holiday.

The Justice Ministry said Egyptians who did not vote would be fined, and train fares were waived in an effort to boost the numbers.

The vote, which began on Monday, pits Sisi against the left-wing candidate Hamdeen Sabahi, a former legislator and long-term Nasserist who came third in the 2012 election.

Sisi, who quit the army in March to run for president, led a coup that removed the nation’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Mursi, last July.

The camps of both candidates criticised the election commission’s move to extend voting and said they had filed complaints against it.

An adviser to Sabahi said he would consider withdrawing from the race if his complaint was ignored.

Sabahi’s campaign denounced the extension as an attempt ‘to prevent the Egyptians from expressing their opinion through manipulating the turnout rates and the voting percentages’.

BDST: 1251 HRS, MAY 28, 2014