Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi will be sworn in on Tuesday to begin his third consecutive term, against a backdrop of a serious economic crisis coupled with a “catastrophic” human rights situation, experts say. In power for a decade, al-Sissi, 69, will officially begin this new mandate on Wednesday, more than three months after his unsurprising re-election with 89.6% of the vote against three candidates little known to the general public. His new term, of six years, is supposed to be the last in accordance with the Egyptian Constitution.
Sissi will be sworn in for his third term from the New Capital
Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will take the oath of office on Tuesday morning in front of Parliament in the new administrative capital, about fifty kilometers east of Cairo, according to the state daily al-Ahram. According to MP Moustafa Bakri, known to be close to power, the government should present its resignation immediately after the inauguration of President Sissi, although “the Constitution does not oblige it to do so”.
Abdel Fattah al-Sissi begins his new mandate with two thirds of the 106 million inhabitants living below or just above the poverty line. Egypt also saw the value of its currency divided by three and its debt multiplied by as much. And with a severe shortage of foreign currency crippling trade, the cost of living in this import-dependent economy has continued to rise, with inflation prancing at 35%. “I didn’t find a country but some rubbish and they told me ‘hey, take this!'”, Mr. Sissi justified himself to the Egyptians during a speech in March.
Billions of dollars
In the first quarter of 2024, Cairo benefited from an influx of several tens of billions of dollars, including 35 billion from the United Arab Emirates and an extension of five billion from an original loan of three billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These funds are nevertheless accompanied by increasingly drastic conditions imposed by donors. “The Egyptian state and the army must disengage from the economy,” said IMF boss Kristalina Georgieva. “The State wants to intervene more, not withdraw,” said economist Mohammed Fouad.
For supporters of Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, this influx of foreign currencies should bring the economy back afloat. This rescue plan certainly saved Egypt “from falling into the abyss”, according to the former minister and ex-boss of the General Authority for Investment, Ziad Bahaa-Eldin, but “we must not believe that the crisis is over or that our problems are resolved,” he wrote in the pages of the independent daily al-Masry al-Youm.
An analysis shared by Mohammed Fouad, for whom the crisis risks being perpetuated if structural measures are not taken aimed at “reducing public spending, removing the State from the economy and targeting inflation rather than the exchange rate “.
“Same errors”
For Ziad Bahaa-Eldin, “what international and local observers are waiting for (…) is a transition towards programs capable of stimulating the real economy”, so as to “not repeat the same mistakes”. At the same time, Egypt is caught between two wars: in neighboring Sudan, nearly a year of war between two rival generals has forced more than 500,000 Sudanese to join Egypt.
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli threats to invade the town of Rafah on the border with Egypt, where more than a million and a half people are crowded, make Cairo fear a massive exodus of Palestinians towards the Sinai . And inside the country, frustration is growing but it is difficult to express itself publicly as the opposition is muzzled. In terms of human rights, the situation “remains catastrophic”, Mohamed Lotfy, director of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, an NGO based in Cairo, told AFP.
Egypt, ranked 136th out of 142 countries in the World Justice Project’s rule of law rankings, is one of the countries that uses the death penalty the most. According to Washington, Cairo violates human rights in everything from prisons to freedom of expression to LGBT+ rights. Mohamed Lotfy admits that his country experienced “a breakthrough in human rights” in 2022 with “national dialogue” and the release of hundreds of political detainees, but, he assures, “all hope has vanished” and there is only one thing left for the Egyptians: “despair”.