Egypt’s former military chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was sworn in Sunday as Egypt’s president, vowing to lead the country through important changes and correct the past mistakes.

Egypt's former military chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was sworn in Sunday as Egypt's president, vowing to lead the country through important changes and correct the past mistakes.

He said that Egypt, in its next phase, will witness a total rise on both internal and external fronts, “to compensate what we have missed and correct the mistakes of the past.”

“In the long history that goes back thousands of years, our homeland did not witness democratic transfer of power. Now, for the first time, the President-elect shakes hands with the outgoing President, and together they sign a power transfer document in an unprecedented occasion,” he said in an address in front of the Supreme Constitutional Court's General Assembly in Cairo.

Sisi took the oath of office for a four-year term. After the ceremony in front of the Supreme Constitutional Court's General Assembly in Cairo, he got a 21-gun salute followed by the national anthem.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, Arab royals from the Gulf and African leaders attended the reception at Cairo's Ittihadiya presidential palace and congratulated the new president on his election.
  
Soldiers and police deployed in force in the capital in anticipation of protests by ousted president Mohamed Mursi's battered Muslim Brotherhood movement and possible militant attacks.

Sisi won the May 26-28 election with 96.9 percent of the vote, in a crushing defeat for his only rival, leftist leader Hamdeen Sabbahi. Turnout was 47.5 percent.
  
In a televised address after his victory was announced on Tuesday, Sisi called on Egyptians to "work to return security to this nation".  "The future is a blank page, and it is in our hands to fill with what we want... bread, freedom, human dignity, social justice," he said.