by Dr. Mordechai Kedar
In the life of a nation, there are difficult periods and times of crisis that call for certain extraordinary steps, and it may be that the reelection of Sisi, while not an ideal solution, is better than any other.
The end of March will mark four years since Abed al-Fatah
al-Sisi was elected to the presidency in Egypt, and elections will be held to
determine the next president. Sisi has declared his candidacy, and and a few
other people have declared their candidacy against him: former Chief
of Staff Sami Anan; Atty. Khaled Ali; academician from Suez Canal University
Muna al-Baranes; businessman Mahmoud
Ramadan; scientist Essam Heggy and others.
The problem is that everyone who has declared his
candidacy finds himself harassed by the
police, arrested or the victim of slander, to the extent that at this
point there is no serious contender against Sisi. There are many Egyptians who
are calling for boycotting the elections because there will not really be a choice,
since the result will be known beforehand.
Commentators claim – apparently correctly – that the state
of political freedom and individual rights in Egypt today is worse than when
Mubarak was president, and that the police and military have become more powerful during
the four years of Sisi’s rule. There is an obvious reason for this, which
is the war on terror, which is a real war. It is difficult and Sisyphean, and its
end is nowhere in sight.
Egypt also faces a threat that is much greater than terror, which is the
danger that the flow of the Nile waters from Sudan might be significantly reduced as a
result of the construction of the Grand Renaissance Dam in Ethiopia, hugging the border with South Sudan. Egypt
depends on the Nile for drinking water, irrigation and industry and will have increased need for water with the growth of the population, which now stands at ninety million. Until
this point, Sisi’s efforts to convince Ethiopia to stop the construction of the
dam have failed, and this remains an unsolved problem.
Terror is onerous for the Egyptians for another reason as well, because in addition to the direct
harm in fatalities, wounded and damage, the tourism industry has been suffering, since
foreign tourists come to relax, to tour and enjoy themselves, not to become
victims of a terror attack.
There is a great deal of administrative and governmental corruption in
Egypt and many people feel discouraged because they see no way out of their
problems.
Under the present circumstances, where it is almost certain that Sisi will
be reelected, continuing the present regime might, ironically, be the preferable outcome. I
do not support dictatorship nor the denial of human rights or political
freedoms, but the alternative to Sisi, apparently, would be Egypt’s accelerated
sinking into the maze of problems in which she is already caught.
In the life of a nation, there are difficult periods and times of crisis
that call for certain extraordinary steps, and it may be that
the reelection of Sisi, while not an ideal solution, is better than any other.
From this stage, I wish the Egyptians and Sisi great success in the attempt
to emerge from the maze of problems in which they are ensnared.
Translated from Hebrew by Sally Zahav
Dr. Mordechai Kedar
Source: https://tinyurl.com/ybr9vzg7
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