Abdul Fattah al-Sisi is the front-runner in Egypt’s next presidential election, which will be held from December 10th to 12th. The former army chief’s 10-year rule could be extended until 2030, despite being marked by a widespread crackdown on opposition and economic and security decline. Many believe that this outcome is already implicit.
More than a decade after Abdel Fattah al-Sisi overthrew Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Islamist Mohamed Mursi, he still rules the country with an iron fist. are doing.
Mr. Sisi’s opponents and supporters alike are confident that he will win this year’s presidential election, which will be held from December 10 to 12. His victories in 2014 and 2018, with more than 96 percent of the vote, leave no doubt about what will happen this time.
If he wins, the former army chief will remain in power until 2030. Sisi himself amended Egypt’s constitution in 2019, extending the presidential term from four to six years, allowing him to run for a third term.
Rising through the ranks – to the Presidency
Sisi was born in Cairo in November 1954, one of 14 children raised in a conservative family. The son of a shopkeeper, he decided from an early age to pursue his military career and climbed the social ladder in a country ruled by the military. Sisi, who spent much of his life away from public life, rose to fame in 2012 when he became Egypt’s army chief of staff and defense minister.
The surprise promotion was granted by President Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected head of state, just over a year after former president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in the Arab Spring. At the time, Mr. Sisi was portrayed in the media as a devout Muslim aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood movement, from which Mr. Morsi came. Its reputation was built primarily on Sisi’s family ties to Abbas al-Sisi, a disciple of the Islamist group’s founder Hassan al-Banna.
But Mr. Sisi’s rapid rise to power within the military would have been impossible if there had been any doubt about his close ties to the Brotherhood, which is under Mubarak’s watch.
Mr. Sisi, who partly trained in Britain and the United States, rose through the ranks to become head of military intelligence after becoming commander of Egypt’s northern military zone, quickly establishing himself as the country’s strongman. In the aftermath of the massive uprising in early July 2013 in which millions of Egyptians demanded Morsi’s immediate resignation, Sisi issued an ultimatum to the former president and his cabinet. Although he did not explicitly call for Morsi’s resignation, he called on Egyptian politicians to “respond to the demands of the people” within 48 hours.
If Morsi refuses, the military (already in charge of the post-Mubarak transition) will be forced to “unveil a roadmap for the future”, putting an end to the revolution that has been simmering since 2011. It will be.
Shortly after, the Islamist president was ousted, arrested, and imprisoned. But the bloody crackdown on demonstrators, many of whom supported the Muslim Brotherhood, will not be forgotten.Human Rights Watch explained The large-scale killing of demonstrators at the time was likely a “crime against humanity.”
Morsi collapsed and died in a Cairo courtroom while attending a trial in 2019.
Described as humble and competent by his admirers and distrustful and suspicious by his detractors, Mr. He took off his military uniform to serve in the military.
For Egyptians opposed to the political Islam embodied by the Muslim Brotherhood, Sisi saved the country from its domination.
Oppression left, right and center
Since Mr. Sisi won a landslide victory in the May 2014 presidential election, opposition parties and local and international NGOs have accused him of seeking a return to dictatorship. They say that since he took power, “repression has reached unprecedented levels.”
in report In a statement published on October 2, six international and local human rights groups condemned the “widespread and systematic use of torture” by Egyptian authorities, amounting to “crimes against humanity under customary international law.” .
Alongside his repressive political stranglehold, Mr. Sisi has also launched a series of mega-projects aimed at extolling Egypt’s greatness and pleasing the nationalist sentiments of his compatriots.
These ambitious projects included modernizing the country’s road and power infrastructure and building a new administrative capital located in the desert some 50 kilometers from Cairo. Ironically nicknamed “Sisi City”, construction was scheduled to be completed in 2020 but is still in the first phase.
In August 2015, the president announced plans for a major expansion of the Suez Canal. This is another flagship project aimed at symbolizing a “new Egypt”. The project, which cost approximately 7.9 billion euros, was completed on schedule within a year.
The new Suez Canal will bring record net revenues of around 8.6 billion euros in 2022-2023, prompting President Sisi to promise prosperity and security for all Egyptians.
But keeping that promise will not be easy in a country hit by an unprecedented economic crisis and on the brink of defaulting on its external debt.
Egypt relies heavily on income from Ukrainian and Russian tourists, so the economy was hit hard when war broke out in February 2022. According to local statistics, annual tourist numbers from both countries have plummeted from 35% to 40%. Egypt is also one of the world’s leading wheat importing countries. When prices rose as a result of the war, the country’s economy bore the brunt.
In the decade since Mr. Sisi came to power, Egypt and its 105 million residents have been mired in poverty, relying largely on a steady trickle of aid from Saudi Arabia.
An important ally of the West
Despite his shortcomings, Mr. Sisi is still seen by many international leaders as a guarantor of stability and security in the region. Western countries have turned a blind eye to his human rights abuses and see him as an important ally in what they see as the chaotic Middle East.
This situation has become even more pronounced since Hamas’s bloody attack on Israel on October 7 and the subsequent Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. During the week-long ceasefire in Gaza from November 24 to 30, hostages held by Hamas were sent from the southern part of the enclave to Egypt. The Rafah border, on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, is also where humanitarian supplies are transported to the Palestinian territories.
read moreGaza-Egypt Rafah border crossing described as ‘not a normal border’
As Western countries protested his power grab in 2014, the pragmatic Sisi kept a low profile.. The United States and Europe did not congratulate him after his election victory, but stressed the need to return to respecting human rights as soon as possible.
In response, Sisi sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In November 2014, a month after the United States froze military and financial aid to Egypt, the Kremlin announced it would deliver air defense systems to the country and said negotiations were underway to deliver military aircraft.
A shrewd strategist, Sisi knows that the West cannot turn its back on the most populous Arab nation for too long. Egypt is both a strategic mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a key ally in the fight against terrorism.
The fight against Islamic extremism has focused attention on how world leaders view Sisi, especially in the case of the United States. Former US President Donald Trump congratulated the Egyptian leader in 2016 after years of tension under the Obama administration. “We are in a very difficult situation. We are very behind Egypt and the Egyptian people,” Trump said during Sisi’s first official visit to the United States in April 2017.
When Sisi visited France in October 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron insisted he did not want to “lecture” the Egyptian president on human rights.
According to parliament, from 2010 to 2019, Egypt imported 7.7 billion euros of French weapons.
Securing the Sinai Peninsula, another empty promise
Like his military predecessors, Sisi is obsessed with acquiring modern weapons and securing borders. This trend is increasing as his neighboring countries Libya, Sudan, Israel and the Gaza Strip are all affected by the ongoing conflict.
Egypt has been battling a jihadist insurgency in the Sinai region, a peninsula in the country’s northeast, for years. According to the opposition, this continuing threat to Egypt’s internal security is being used by the authorities as a means to restrict civil liberties.
In 2018, Mr. Sisi launched a major “counterterrorism” operation in areas infested with Islamic extremists, some of whom have pledged allegiance to Islamic State, but so far to no avail. The Sinai Peninsula remains a security thorn in the side of Mr. Sisi, who also supports empty promises.
This article is a translated version of the original French text.
