“Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the general who ousted Egypt’s first freely elected leader, declared his candidacy on Wednesday for a presidential election he is expected to easily win. Sisi toppled Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood last July after mass protests against his rule and has emerged as the most influential figure in an interim administration that has governed since then. “I am here before you humbly stating my intention to run for the presidency of the Arab Republic of Egypt,” Sisi said in a televised address to the nation. “Only your support will grant me this great honor.” A Sisi presidency would mark a return to the days when Egypt was led by men from the military, a pattern briefly interrupted by Mursi’s one year in office after his 2012 victory in Egypt’s first democratic presidential election……………”
The Generalisimo Field Marshal Al Sisi, having declared his candidacy, is now leader of Egypt in name as well as in fact. I know he has not been elected yet. Is there any doubt that he will be named the ‘elected’ president of Egypt after coming sham elections in which only the ‘faithful’, the terrified, and the sycophant will get to speak and vote?
Unlike Nasser or even Sadat or even the somnolent Mubarak (most Arabs called him La Vache Qui Rite), he is coming to power in style, with a real loud blood-soaked bang. His apparent example seems to be someone between Augusto Pinochet of Chile (later pal of Margaret Thatcher) and the generals who overthrew Isabel Peron in Argentina in the 1970s. He is veering more toward Pinochet right now, with all the killings on the streets and in the execution rooms. Not to mention those who die of natural causes in custody. Many will also start disappearing now that the old apparatus of State Security is back in force.
He is also very likely condemning his country to a perpetual state of civil war, a state of political terrorism that matches the state terrorism he has imposed since July 3, 2012, when he overthrew the incompetent and (also) reactionary but freely elected Morsi. (It is true that Morsi was a schmuck, but he was an elected schmuck).
But he has promises of money and investments and even weapons from the Arab Counter-Revolutionary Counter-Democracy camp. You know where that camp is, and if you don’t know then explain where you have been for the past few years.
Cheers
mhg
