Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi, in power in Egypt since he overthrew the Islamist Mohamed Morsi in 2013, announced on Monday evening October 2 that he would present his candidacy for the presidential election in December. An election which will take place against a backdrop of economic crisis and which promises to be more difficult than the previous ones. At the end of a conference during which he rolled out “ten years of success”, he said he wanted to “run to continue dreaming with a new mandate”. I invite “all voters to vote, even if it is not for me,” he added.
While his competitors denounce “attacks” against their supporters, thousands of people supporting the head of state were bused to squares in all major cities where their jubilation was broadcast live on the stage where the head of state the State spoke.
The opposition is formed
In 2014 and then in 2018, Mr. Sisi won with 96% then 97% of the votes against an opposition either crushed by relentless repression or puppet. Even if experts do not doubt his victory, the candidacies of opponents who directly attack the president and the powerful army from which he comes are multiplying, an unprecedented fact since his takeover.
Relatives of several historic party leaders claim to have collected the twenty signatures of deputies necessary to apply for the supreme office. A 44-year-old ex-MP accustomed to anti-Sissi outings, Ahmed Al-Tantaoui chose to collect signatures from citizens. He needs 25,000 to validate his candidacy and, for a week, he has been traveling the country to accompany his supporters who are going to register the signatures in the administrations.
He claimed that his phone had been tapped, that dozens of his supporters had been arrested, and his campaign team announces every day that signatures are being refused or that some of his supporters have been attacked. The videos of his supporters chanting slogans in the streets in a country where protesting is banned, his interviews with independent media and his insistence on campaigning for a “rule of law” are a novelty in Egypt, where public debate has been reduced to nothing since 2013.
Controversial statements
Opposite, Mr. Sisi is submitting to the vote for the third time – the last according to the Constitution which he had modified in 2019 to be able to represent himself and extend his mandate from four to six years. He warned Saturday’s 105 million Egyptians, already strangled by 40% inflation and a 50% devaluation, that they needed to make “sacrifices.” “If construction, development and progress must come at the cost of hunger and deprivation, never say ‘we prefer to have food’,” he said.
Social networks, on which Egyptians have long been careful not to be too virulent as arrests for online writings have multiplied, immediately burst into flames. “I’m shocked, he’s offering us starvation,” denounces one Internet user. “Normally we make electoral promises, even false ones; He promises famine,” protests another.
On Sunday, another of his statements caused a scandal: “I can destroy the country (…) with 100,000 poor people if I give them a bar of hash, 1,000 Egyptian pounds and some Tramadol pills. » An outing that reminded Egyptians of the “revolution” of 2011, when the regime mobilized thugs to attack demonstrators.
The authorities brought the presidential election forward by several months to be able to carry out a new devaluation in its wake, according to experts. Mr. Sisi claims to have defeated “terrorism” and made “development” his priority. Economists denounce pharaonic projects – new cities including the new capital, high-speed trains, bridges and roads – which have only siphoned off state coffers and tripled the debt.
