Middle East: Succession and Stalemate

When the late Gamal Abdel Nasser staged a presidential referendum in 1965, he ran up a 99.9% vote of approval. Only 65 voters out of 6,951,206 rebuffed him. Last week his successor as Egypt's President fared considerably worse. More than 7,100,000 voters were asked to vote naam (yes) or la (no) on the question "Do you agree that Anwar Sadat should be President?" They gave the 52-year-old former Vice President no more than a 90.04% naam vote, and 711,252 Egyptians voted la. Two days after the election and 19 days after his...

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