Masum Billah :
With a view to returning to strongman leadership for Egypt its army chief Abdel Fatah al-Sisi resigned from the military. In a televised address to the nation he said on March 26 “I am here before you humbly stating my intention to run for the presidency of the Arab Republic of Egypt. “Only your support will grant me this great honour.” It shows us the similar characteristics of all the military dictators of the world. Three years and two months after the fall of Egypt’s last ex-military strongman, Hosni Mubarak – as Egypt’s military council, known as Scaf, convened to allow Sisi to resign.”If I am granted the honour of the leadership,” Sisi said, “I promise that we together – leadership and people – can achieve stability, safety and hope for Egypt.”He also warned Egyptians that the country faced a host of economic and political challenges, and asked them for their patience and help in rebuilding the state.
The supporters of the Brotherhood detest him for leading a crackdown on dissent that has seen at least 16,000 people jailed since July, and over a thousand killed. A small group of secular liberals, who are now also victims of the state crackdown, also want the army out of politics. Thousands of students at Cairo university chanted against military rule as news of Sisi’s resignation began to trickle through.In January’s constitutional referendum, which was seen as a poll on Sisi himself, over 98% of those who voted said yes to the new constitution, and implicitly for the general too. But only 38.6% of the electorate took part, less than Sisi would have hoped for.Sameh Seif Elyazal, a retired general expected to form part of Sisi’s campaign, said: “For the majority of Egyptians who were waiting anxiously for this moment, they will be very happy – but I think the Muslim Brotherhood will be very upset and angry.”Three leading candidates from the 2012 elections have already withdrawn from this year’s race, warning that the election will be a sham
Political analysts comment on Sisi’s running for presidential elections. They say Sisi risks his popularity plummeting once he becomes president since Egypt’s economic and political challenges are so intractable that they cannot be easily solved. HA Hellyer , Egypt analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, said: “A Sisi presidency is going to face the key structural problems endemic in Egypt as Tantawi, Mubarak and Morsi did. He actually has a worse situation to deal with, considering the security threats, and the counterproductive efforts of the Egyptian state in facing all those problems. Analysts also say it remains to be seen how authoritarian a Sisi presidency will be, as it is currently unlikely that he is directly coordinating Egypt’s crackdown on dissent. Michael Hanna , an analyst of Egyptian politics says to the Guardian , ” The real problem will appear after election.”
Egyptians persistently compare Sisi with Gamal Abdel Nasser.Since the last days of Mohammed Morsi’s presidency, protesters would often raise pictures of Nasser and Sisi side by side..A few months after the 1952 revolution , the Revolutionary Council, of which Nasser was the most influential figure, dissolved political parties. And while “building a healthy democratic life” was one of the six principles of 1952’s revolution, that principle was never materialized during Nasser’s life – nor in his successors’. If he succeeds, Sisi, however, will be assuming responsibility of a country deeply in debt with a faltering economy and facing hostile challenges at home and abroad.
Many similarities can be drawn between Nasser and Sisi. Both originate from the army, although Nasser was a mere middle rank colonel in 1952 while Sisi was promoted to the highest army rank, field marshal. They were close allies and later turned to worst enemies of the Muslim Brotherhood. Both removed a sitting president; Nasser removed Egypt’s first president, Mohammad Naguib and Sisi removed Morsi. Nasser and Sissi developed close relationships with the United States before the relationships went dead sour. Both are charismatic and have a huge following of loyal fans and supporters. Sisi earned people’s support before becoming a president, whereas Nasser acquired most of his popularity while in office. Pushing a nationalistic agenda of independence both of them gained public support. Nasser was a professed enemy of Israel, against which he fought in three wars, Sisi seems committed to peace with Israel, so far. Sisi seems calm and calculating comparing to Nasser’s confrontational and impulsive nature.
Both Nasser and Sisi turned East when relationships with the United States went sour – Nasser to the then Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc, India, Indonesia, Africa and even Latin America; Sisi to Russia, for now. But while Nasser was a hero in Africa because of the role he played championing liberation movements putting an end to the era of colonization.Nasser had a terrible relationship with Saudi Arabia that turned into a semi-proxy war in Yemen in the 1960s, Saudi Arabia stood firmly behind Egypt and continues to support Sisi and Egypt’s interim
The analysts say that al-Sis’s running for president 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. 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.So al-Sisi is that he is running on a platform of bringing in major strategic rent from the Gulf. In essence, he is repeating the strategy of Anwar El Sadat of the early 1970s.
Just as Sadat initially replaced Russia with Saudi and other Gulf support, so al-Sisi is attempting to replace US aid with Gulf strategic rent. US aid anyway has drawbacks. It is actually aid to US arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and Boeing- Egypt gets tanks and helicopters in kind, not cash on the barrel head. Egypt needs is to make factories and invest in the economy, US military aid isn’t that useful. The other drawback is that the US wanted the Egyptian military to put up with Muslim Brotherhood rule on the grounds that the Brotherhood had been legitimately elected. The Obama administration did not want Morsi overthrown. Many in Washington had hoped that enticing devotees of political Islam into parliamentary politics could result in a decline of radicalism and al-Qaeda.
Michael Hanna asks, “Will a President Sisi – with the backing of the military, and with what he would consider a popular mandate decide that he can make decisions?” The Non-Aligned Movement, which Nasser co-founded along with Nehru, Tito and Sukarno, had 120 member-countries and 17 observers. Nasser headed the movement between 1964 and 1970, when he died. As a result, Nasser could mobilize a landslide majority in the UN General Assembly that infuriated Western powers such as the United States, Britain and France. Sisi promised to rid Egypt “and the region” from the evils of terrorist organizations. Does this include direct or indirect intervention in Syria to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham , Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaeda?If Sisi wins, does this mean a revival of Arab nationalism?
(Masum Billah is Program Manager: BRAC Education Program : Email: [email protected])
