By Brian Whitaker
Some of General Sisi's admirers, apparently. Photo via Twitter
"Yesterday’s events in Egypt – on the third anniversary of the uprising against Mubarak – resulted in at least 49 deaths and more than 1,000 arrests, according to the latest figures.
Not that staff at al-Ahram newspaper seem to have noticed. The semi-official daily (in Arabic) describes “popular celebrations” throughout the country, flags, flowers and the singing of patriotic songs while incorporating in its report 16 mentions of General Sisi, Egypt’s military leader, and no mentions of the latest violence.
Plus ça change. Three years ago, al-Ahram marked the start of the Egyptian uprising with a front-page headline which said: "Widespread protests and disturbances in Lebanon".
A few days ago al-Ahram’s English-language weekly also published a strange attack on several prominent Middle East specialists in the United States, basically accusing them of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
The cause of al-Ahram’s outrage was an article by Steven Cook for the Council on Foreign Relations website which urged Sisi not to run for the Egyptian presidency.
Cook acknowledged that Sisi does have widespread support – “people are convincing themselves that Egypt needs a strong personality, if only temporarily, to put the country back on track” – but argued that if Sisi decides to run for president and wins “it would be bad for Egypt, bad for the Egyptian armed forces, and bad for al-Sisi himself”.
Responding in al-Ahram Weekly, Abdel-Moneim Said says the real question is not so much whether or not Sisi will run for president “but whether or not the dictatorship-producing environment has changed”.
“The Egyptian people are no longer passive or apathetic,” Said continues. “They will no longer accept a government that fails to meet their goals.”
That is probably true. Sisi is likely to have more difficulty establishing a new dictatorship than Nasser or Mubarak did. But will he be tempted to try? Abdel-Moneim Said thinks not:
“Perhaps some quarters in the military harboured nostalgic yearnings for those good old days in the early Nasserist or Mubarak eras. But all that is history and cannot be brought back again.“Al-Sisi is fully aware of this. Perhaps this is the secret behind his hesitancy to run for president. He knows that his battle will not be the electoral race, but rather the profound and complex problems and dilemmas that he would have to address afterwards.”
Even if we suspend scepticism about Sisi’s intentions and political ambitions, the military’s behaviour over the last few months scarcely suggests it is the harbinger of a golden age for Egyptian democracy where, in Said’s words, “a new sun can shine every morning”.
For a start, suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t help. Portraying it as a terrorist organisation or pushing it into a position where it becomes one does not advance Egypt politically. The accusations of violence merely distract from important – and still unresolved – debates about Islamism in general and the role of religion in politics.
The new constitution also formalises suppression of the Brotherhood by outlawing parties “formed on the basis of religion”. Again, this is unlikely to have the intended effect of marginalising Islamists. Exposing them to public scrutiny through electoral politics would probably be a far better strategy in the long run, as Elizabeth Nugent argues in an article for the Washington Post.
Meanwhile, it’s still unclear whether Sisi fully appreciates how much the rules have changed. He is already a divisive figure and even if he legitimises his position through the ballot box, playing the “strong man” won’t work if it drives away allies and antagonises large sections of the population."
Sisi mania: Gold masks of Egypt's military leader on display in Cairo. Photo via Twitter
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