Ten years ago, he was the “hero” who rid Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood. Today, President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi won a third term at the head of a country whose kneeling economy is fueling popular discontent.
In July 2013, military uniform on his back and dark glasses on his nose, Mr. Sissi called on the Egyptians to give him a “mandate” to overthrow the Islamist Mohamed Morsi and was easily elected in his place the following year.
On Monday, he was re-elected for his third term with 89.6% of the vote.
This presidential election was also a referendum for the child from the Gamaliya district, in Old Cairo, father of four children, one of whom, Mahmoud, is known to be influential within intelligence.
Mr. Sissi crushed his three competitors, but this time his popular base and even his foreign support have withered over the years and an economic management which has seen the value of the currency divided by two and the debt multiplied by three .
Power personified
Because the man personified power: the New Capital under construction since 2015 in the desert on the edge of Cairo is the mark he wants to leave. It is the cornerstone of the “New Republic” which has become the slogan of the media close to the State and the security apparatus or controlled by them.
The 69-year-old ex-marshal, who now only appears in civilian clothes – strict suit or sports outfit for filmed bike rides or impromptu visits to families – directs “alone and is now the only one pointed out “, Hossam Bahgat, one of Egypt’s most influential human rights activists, told AFP.
But muzzling civil society could turn against him, warns Mr. Bahgat: “there is no longer any way for the population to express their protest in an organized way so everyone is waiting for the explosion” in this country of 106 millions of inhabitants.
For a decade, he was for the majority “the savior” who defeated “terrorism”, as recalled in a Ramadan 2022 soap opera whose actors he personally rewarded.
The population then accepted his calls for “sacrifices” because every day he inaugurated new roads, bridges and other railway lines. Importantly, his government announced the eradication of hepatitis C, a long-standing disease endemic in Egypt.
Today, social networks are ablaze when he suggests that students “donate their blood to earn money”.
But “the majority of important capitals no longer have confidence in its economic model,” analyzes researcher Robert Springborg.
His predecessors, all military with the exception of Mr. Morsi, gave pride of place to businessmen close to them. He promotes “the militarization of the economy and gigantic loans for prestige projects with limited economic returns,” notes Mr. Springborg.
“Everything is gone”
Projects financed in particular by generous deposits in dollars from the Gulf, a windfall now dried up by States which demand “returns on investments” in return. They “no longer believe that the Egyptian government has the political will to change things,” explains researcher Hafsa Halawa.
If criticism comes from the East, they also come from the West: Egypt could once again lose part of its American military aid because of human rights, the head of the influential Commission on Human Rights recently announced. Senate Foreign Affairs.
Mr. Sissi, whom former US President Donald Trump called, according to leaks, his “favorite dictator”, is regularly singled out by NGOs for the thousands of political detainees, arrests for online writings denouncing inflation or, more recently, the incarceration of a potential presidential candidate, Hicham Kassem, and the trial of a declared candidate, Ahmed al-Tantawy.
The latter continues to insist that Mr. Sissi is “the worst leader Egypt has known in 200 years”. He accuses him in particular of having undermined the rule of law, like the activists who assure that he has “made exceptional laws the norm”.
After a decade under Mr. Sissi, says Mr. Bahgat, “a generation grew up without knowing that before there were political broadcasts where one could criticize the power, that there were opposition newspapers and political institutions such as municipalities. All that stuff is gone and they don’t even know what it is.”