Egypt: The New Pharaoh

EGYPT

The New Pharaoh

A man stood alone on a Cairo street corner in April holding a placard.

“No to amending the constitution,” said the sign.

Police quickly arrested him, the New York Times reported.

The man was protesting a referendum that asked voters whether they wanted to give President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi the opportunity to extend his term in office through 2030, Voice of America explained.

Election officials said 44 percent of voters turned out, and almost 90 percent of them said yes.

Critics lamented the results, which were, many say, a nullification of the country’s revolution.

In 2011, Egyptians inspired by the success of protests in Tunisia took to the streets and helped launch the Arab Spring, a movement for democratic reforms that swept through North Africa and the Middle East. The Egyptian protests, focused on Cairo’s Tahrir Square, succeeded in ousting President Hosni Mubarak, a corrupt, US-backed dictator who had ruled the country for 30 years. They pushed officials to hold true democratic elections for the first time.

Then things went sideways. Islamist candidate Mohamed Morsi won office and embarked on a series of reforms that rankled secular Egyptians. In 2013, Sissi and the military staged a coup. Morsi is now sitting in jail, and the White House said Tuesday that the Trump administration is mulling whether to declare his Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group.

Since then, Sissi has increasingly exerted control over Egyptian society. Human rights activists have called his rule oppressive. He’s jailed 60,000 people for political reasons, wrote Bahey eldin Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, in the Washington Post.

But Sissi portrays himself as a messianic figure who is the country’s sole guardian against extremism and foreign threats, and the only leader who can revive its moribund economy. “God created me like a doctor who can make a diagnosis,” he said in 2015. “This is God’s blessing. I know the truth and I see it. … Now the world listens to me.”

For many, the referendum appeared to cement the country’s slide back into authoritarianism. “Eight years ago, Egypt was the beacon of hope for the Arab world,” wrote CNN in an analysis. “Now it is a cautionary tale.”

Few Egyptians believe the vote was free and fair, added British-Arab journalist Osama Gaweesh in a Guardian opinion piece.

Critics noted that the language of the referendum was finalized only 72 hours before voting began. Allegations of vote buying were widespread. A Reuters journalist saw authorities giving voters vouchers for cooking oil, pasta, sugar and tea as they left a polling station.

The reported turnout of 44 percent was suspiciously high for a referendum, analysts told Middle East Eye, a London-based news outlet. They questioned how officials could have processed 27 million voters in the three days polls were open, then counted the ballots so quickly.

Sissi will nonetheless claim he has the support of his people. That may or may not be true. But he’s still in charge.