Social Unrest In Egypt

EGYPT

Of Pharaohs and Tin Ears

Egyptians are furious about corruption.

Their rage stems from viral videos posted by Egyptian businessman Mohamed Ali, who alleged that President Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi forced him to build luxury hotels and palaces for Sissi and his cronies in the military while failing to pay bills for other construction projects.

“You say the Egyptian people are very poor and that we should tighten our belts, but you are throwing away billions and your men are wasting millions,” Ali said in one video cited by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

Sissi denied the accusations, Agence France-Presse reported, adding that Ali’s accusations were tantamount to slander.

The president’s explanations flopped. The videos unleashed years of pent-up frustrations over graft and economic stagnation. Protests, rare in Egypt under Sissi, have broken out, reported Al Jazeera. As activists called for Sisi’s resignation, the military closed down Tahrir Square, site of the demonstrations that brought down former dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

The civil unrest is the “most intense political pressure” that Sissi has faced since 2013, when he seized power from Mohamed Morsi in a military coup, VICE wrote. Morsi was Egypt’s first democratically elected head of state and an Islamist whose leadership also sparked widespread disturbances.

Egypt’s state-controlled media have long told stressed how Sissi is universally popular. But, writing in Middle East Eye, media scholar Mohamad Elmasry argued that Sissi failed to provide Egyptians with more than “warmed-over Mubarakism,” a mix of dictatorship, corruption, a powerful state security apparatus and cooperation with the West in foreign policy that didn’t include solutions to the grievances that led to Mubarak’s downfall.

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens agreed, concluding that Sissi could have left office after delivering stability in the wake of the Arab Spring. Instead, he now must bear the responsibility for his people’s complaints.

Sure, he’s spending billions on a new capital and other cities to stoke economic growth. But the financing for those projects is in doubt, their benefits as yet unrealized. His austerity program – cutting spending on fuel subsidies, for example, as part of an International Monetary Fund aid package – remains unpopular today.

Meanwhile, one in three Egyptians live in poverty, an increase of 16.7 percent in the past two decades, the Washington Times reported.

Meanwhile, Egyptian security forces have arrested almost 2,000 protesters. Ali lives in Spain, out of Sissi’s reach. He loves to taunt and mock Sisi – from afar, of course.

“El Sisi is now nervous because of the demonstrations, and I am sure he is now appealing to US President Donald Trump to protect him from the next revolution,” Ali quipped.

And Trump did praise and defend the leader, the Washington Times noted.

As the protests continue, military leaders will likely consider whether they must replace Sissi to satisfy the street, wrote Lancaster University fellow Lucia Ardovini in the Conversation.

That would be something, observers say. It would show tired, cowed and frustrated Egyptians that their revolution eight years ago wasn’t a failure. Because it taught the new pharaohs of Egypt that there is danger in not listening.