There will be general elections in Egypt soon, and everybody knows which general is getting elected.
— Amr Gharbeia (@gharbeia) March 26, 2014
Michelle Dunne expects that Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, who announced his run for Egyptian president yesterday, “will not face serious competition on either the right or the left”:
There will most likely be no Islamist contender: Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, now officially considered a terrorist organization, would hardly be tolerated, and Salafi organizations are divided between those supporting Sisi and those boycotting the process. One serious Islamist candidate in 2012, Strong Egypt Party leader Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, has already said he will boycott this election, as will 2012 leftist candidate Khaled Ali. Candidates from the nationalist camp are unlikely to run against Sisi because they do not want to defy the military, whose leaders announced their support for Sisi’s candidacy in an unprecedented statement that many politically aware Egyptians found startling. The one announced competitor so far, Nasserist Hamdeen Sabahi, will draw some protest and labor votes but the young revolutionaries he attracted in 2012 are now scattered and demoralized.
Robert Springborg, noting that two-thirds of Egyptians approve of Sisi, considers his appeal:
The field marshal’s popularity is due to that of the military, which continues to be the most trusted institution in the country, with around 90% of Egyptians expressing their support for it; to his message of restoring stability by virtue of a crackdown on Islamists; by his skillful projection of an upbeat officer image, replete with snazzy headgear, combined with that of a devout Muslim harboring traditional respect for women and Christians; and by his careful avoidance of substantive policies, especially those of economics.
That this message, which avoids truly critical matters, can be so popular and believable attests in part to his skill in delivering it, which rests both on his military background and on his traditional upbringing in Cairo’s al-Gamaliyya district, the very heart of historic, Islamic Cairo venerated by novelist Naguib Mahfouz and in the imagination of most Egyptians. He is the very living example of what traditional Egyptian values and practices can produce. And even if he is ultimately revealed as “fahlawi,” a skilled deceiver of others, that too could be positively interpreted as a sign of his Egyptianness and suitability for a leadership role.
But Steven A. Cook argues that the country’s politics “are likely to be hotly contested, even under a President Sisi”:
To the casual observer, Sisi must seem like the only political force in Egypt. A cult of personality followed closely on the heels of the army chief’s emergence last summer: The military-friendly media framed Sisi as “Egypt’s savior,” and stories quickly emerged of Egyptian brides with the field marshal’s visage painted on their fingernails, Sisi chocolates, sandwiches, and pajamas, as well as the standard Middle Eastern strongman-poster-on-every-public-building phenomenon.
But Sisi-mania actually revealed the potential fragility of the army chief’s political position. After all, if the field marshal was as broadly championed as the government would like everyone to believe, there would be no need for ostentatious professions of faith to him. Even recent popular votes don’t necessarily suggest overwhelming support: Although it is true that 98 percent of voters gave their approval to a new constitution in the January referendum – a vote widely seen as a proxy to test support for Sisi – but only 38.6 percent of eligible voters actually went to the polls. The very fact that the interim government has moved aggressively to suppress dissent suggests that Egyptian leaders are vulnerable to political challenges.
Robert Mackey registers an online backlash:
Although Mr. Sisi’s popularity with many Egyptians looking for a strongman to end the turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising is unquestioned, the news of his plans to stand for the presidency was greeted with anger, dismay and sarcasm online by activists, rights workers and commentators who had hoped for something other than a return to autocracy. Before, during and after his televised declaration, they heckled Mr. Sisi, the odds-on favorite for the presidency, on Twitter.
A sample tweet is above. Juan Cole thinks the al-Sisi run “mixes together two motifs”:
First, it is a sort of Bonapartism, a restoration of the presidency to a military man, which had been the case with Egypt’s four post-1952 presidents. The tradition was briefly interrupted in 2012-2013 when there was a civilian, Muslim Brotherhood president, Muhammad Morsi. The military in turn is a steward of the enormous public sector, both of state business elites and of public sector workers.
Second, al-Sisi represents himself as a conduit for substantial influxes of new money into Egypt. Governments that depend on outside money coming in instead of on in-country taxes are called “rentier states” by political scientists. … Most rentier states nowadays get their money from primary commodities such as petroleum and natural gas. Egypt has few hydrocarbon resources. But another way to receive “rent” or external money is to have strategic use for the donor. The $2 billion a year the US gave Egypt after 1978 was strategic rent. Now Saudi Arabia feels insecure about the challenge from Iran, given that the Obama administration seems to be making up with Iran. And it is afraid of the surge of populist Muslim movements that challenge its legitimacy. So having the Egyptian military provide security to the small oil monarchies of the Gulf makes sense both to the emirs and to Egypt. Egypt is being hired as a large security guard.
Ben W. Heineman Jr. considers the challenges Sisi will likely face in office:
Today, the Egyptian economy is in as much distress as it was when Morsi took office. Not only are rates of poverty, inflation, and unemployment high, but GDP growth is sluggish, the budget deficit is yawning, tourism is down, the need for imported fuel is great, and public debt (both foreign and domestic) stands at $268 billion, or 107 percent of GDP. … As president, rather than puppet master, Field Marshal Sisi will grapple with Egypt’s economic challenges in a far more exposed way. And, as was the case for the country’s past two presidents, these profound and prolonged problems could be his undoing – no matter how strong his security state.
(Photo: An Egyptian man has on his chest a portrait of Egypt’s Defence Minister General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi with a slogan in Arabic reading “I vote for the loin of Egypt for the presidency” outside a polling station during the vote on a new constitution on January 14, 2014 in Cairo. By Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images)
The Dish 