Help promote human rights in the Middle East and North Africa

Donate Today
Facebook-f Twitter Instagram Linkedin Youtube Envelope
Search
Close
  • English
  • العربية
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • What We Do
    • Who We Are
    • FAQs
    • Support Dawn
    • Work With Us
    • For the Media
  • Founder Jamal Khashoggi
    • Who Was Jamal Khashoggi?
    • Chronology of a Murder
    • UN Recommendations
    • International Reaction
    • In His Own Words
    • DAWN and Jamal
  • Countries
    • Saudi Arabia
    • Egypt
    • UAE
    • Israel-Palestine
    • DAWN's Culprits Gallery
  • Democracy In Exile
    • About
    • Submission Guidelines for Democracy in Exile
  • Advocacy
    • DAWN's Advocacy
    • The Lobbyist Hall of Shame
    • DAWN's Culprits Gallery
    • Reforming Foreign Policy
      • Aid Conditionality
      • Human Rights Go to War
    • US Foreign Policy in MENA
    • Joint Advocacy
  • Experts
  • Latest
Menu
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • What We Do
    • Who We Are
    • FAQs
    • Support Dawn
    • Work With Us
    • For the Media
  • Founder Jamal Khashoggi
    • Who Was Jamal Khashoggi?
    • Chronology of a Murder
    • UN Recommendations
    • International Reaction
    • In His Own Words
    • DAWN and Jamal
  • Countries
    • Saudi Arabia
    • Egypt
    • UAE
    • Israel-Palestine
    • DAWN's Culprits Gallery
  • Democracy In Exile
    • About
    • Submission Guidelines for Democracy in Exile
  • Advocacy
    • DAWN's Advocacy
    • The Lobbyist Hall of Shame
    • DAWN's Culprits Gallery
    • Reforming Foreign Policy
      • Aid Conditionality
      • Human Rights Go to War
    • US Foreign Policy in MENA
    • Joint Advocacy
  • Experts
  • Latest
Donate

Sisi Is Driving Egypt Off a Cliff

January 25, 2023
in Democracy In Exile, Egypt
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • Mohammad Fadel
    Mohammad Fadel

    Mohammad Fadel is Full Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, where was previously the Canada Research Chair for the Law and Economics of Islamic Law. He is also a DAWN fellow.

    View all posts

Twelve years have now passed since Egyptians bravely took to the streets demanding a right to govern themselves democratically. Some might quibble and claim that the protesters in the center of Cairo, and across so many other cities and towns in Egypt, were not demanding democracy, but something more tangible: "bread, freedom and social justice." Nearly a decade ago, backers of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's coup claimed the intervention of the military was necessary to preserve the "civic" character of Egypt's state against the alleged religious extremism of then-President Mohammed Morsi and his political party, aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet those who cheered for Sisi must now reckon with his track record, which has demonstrated that it is impossible to have a successful "civic" state if it lacks even minimal standards of democratic accountability. Egypt under Sisi's regime is proof that you can't achieve the material benefits of a modern, civic state using the infrastructure of a military dictatorship.

A modern civic state begins and ends with seeking the welfare of its people. It does not see its success in building vanity projects to the great leader, or in the endless line of sycophants waiting to praise him. So, let us ask, how fare the Egyptian people, 12 years after Jan. 25, and now approaching 10 years since the coup that brought Sisi to power? Let us leave aside for the moment the political brutality of Sisi and his allies. The violence they unleashed, which unfolded virtually live on television for the world to see in the summer of 2013 at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, has essentially continued unabated since. Sisi and his allies have destroyed politics in Egypt; Egyptian civil society has never been so thoroughly decimated and demoralized. Even in the darkest days of Hosni Mubarak's rule, a public culture of criticism and intellectual ferment existed. There was a modicum of hope that the Mubarak regime could be persuaded to increase space for democratic participation and accountability. Even though that space was relatively small, it was enough to allow for the possibility of politics and for Egyptians to dream of a better future through collective democratic action.

Egypt under Sisi's regime is proof that you can't achieve the material benefits of a modern, civic state using the infrastructure of a military dictatorship.

- Mohammad Fadel

Sisi and his allies in uniform, however, apparently drew from the Mubarak years the lesson that any amount of space for politics is too much space. So they have set about systematically destroying the capacity of Egyptian civil society to sustain any shred of political life.

This is evident in the pitiable status of Egypt's parliament. Sisi, ever creative in his plans to cement his authoritarianism, understood that Mubarak's strategy of sham elections carried within them revolutionary implications: If only Egypt had honest elections, then Egyptians could enjoy the benefits of democracy and accountable political leadership. Such a lesson needed to be unlearned, and Sisi was determined to show Egyptians that honest elections are irrelevant because institutions like the parliament are themselves irrelevant. By ensuring that parliament is filled with so-called "independents," unaffiliated with any meaningful political party (but really, beholden to Sisi and the military), Sisi guaranteed that parliament would simply be a site for rent-seeking sycophants who are incapable of forming broader social coalitions that could challenge his power. Twelve years ago, the revolution of Jan. 25 began with a national cry based on hope in what could be accomplished if Egyptians worked together. Today, Egypt's leaders do their best to destroy even the possibility that the average Egyptian might hope for a better future in cooperation with his or her fellow citizens.

The central business district under construction in Egypt's new administrative capital, being built some 50 kilometers east of Cairo, May 20, 2022. (Photo by Ahmed Gomaa/Xinhua via Getty Images)

There are those who, despite the destruction wrought on Egyptian political life by Sisi and his ilk, will attempt to justify it in the name of economic development and modernization. Too many people, including professionals in international development, continue to believe, without evidence, that authoritarian regimes are more successful in implementing economic reforms than democracies. The argument is superficially appealing: Economic reforms are painful, and produce many losers, and because they vote, politicians who are democratically accountable will resist adopting needed reforms. An authoritarian regime, the argument goes, is insulated from public pressure, and so can act rationally without fear of losing the next election.

But the authoritarian regime's insulation from civil society also contains within it a profound bug. Its independence from popular input may very well make it easier for it to administer otherwise painful reforms (leaving aside for now the question of the wisdom of those reforms), but it also makes it easier to waste vast public resources on ill-considered projects—like a new, unnecessary capital city to mimic Dubai, rising in the empty desert beyond Cairo, and expansions of the Suez Canal. Democratic politics have the economic advantage of forcing decision-makers to solve the most pressing problems faced by their constituencies. Without such pressure, and without the possibility of accountability, there is no reason to believe that regimes will not use their power to pursue their own private well-being rather than that of the public.

It is safe to say that Sisi's political brutality is matched only by his economic incompetence.

- Mohammad Fadel

It is safe to say that Sisi's political brutality is matched only by his economic incompetence. Egypt's external debt obligations have ballooned from $40 billion in 2012 to over $140 billion at the end of 2021. Despite all the massive borrowing by his government, Egyptian exports have actually declined slightly in this time frame, from $45.8 billion in 2012 to $44.9 billion at the end of 2021. In light of this catastrophic performance, it is no surprise that the value of the Egyptian pound relative to the U.S. dollar has dropped precipitously, from 0.15 Egyptian pounds to the dollar in 2012 to 0.03 Egyptian pounds to the dollar, a loss of almost 80 percent of its value relative to the dollar.

For Egyptians themselves, this has produced widespread immiseration, the negative effects of which will last for at least one, if not more, generations. Almost 73 percent of Egyptians lived on just $5.50 per day or less in 2017, with an annual income of only $2,007, making Egyptians some of the poorest people in the world. To put this in perspective, per capita income in Egypt in 2017 was $2,300. This means that almost three-quarters of the population did not even earn the "average" income—revealing, in addition to widespread poverty, the concentration of national income in the hands of a small slice of society. These numbers mask real human suffering that has no doubt increased as a result of the most recent devaluation of the Egyptian pound. Meanwhile, Sisi is fumbling to try and defend his vanity projects—a small but distinct sign of the public pressure building on his regime.

Democracy is not a utopia. It is hard work. It is prone to mistakes, inefficiency and other human flaws. But it has the virtue of allowing for course correction, something authoritarian regimes systematically lack. Nothing, sadly, will stop an authoritarian regime from driving the bus off the cliff other than its passengers. The autocrat, because it sees the cliff coming, thinks he can bail out in time to save himself, even if it dooms everyone else. Twelve years after Egyptians bravely took to the streets to demand the fall of Mubarak's regime, let's hope this is not Egypt's fate under Sisi.

A giant billboard from Egypt's Defense Ministry depicting President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi next to a message wishing safe travels, atop a newly constructed bridge in the Nasr City district of Cairo, Jan. 15, 2021. (Photo by AMIR MAKAR/AFP via Getty Images)

Source: Getty IMages

Tags: Abdel Fattah al-SisiEgyptEgyptian revolution
Previous Post

Response to Comments by Mike Pompeo Regarding the Murder of Jamal Khashoggi

Next Post

The Silent Branch: How Israel's Supreme Court Crushes Palestinian Rights

Related Posts

Democracy In Exile

The Case for Reparations to the Victims of Yemen's War

In Yemen, war's costs have too often landed on civilians who bear no responsibility for the war nor for...

Kristine Beckerle
February 2, 2023
Democracy In Exile

We Are All Alaa Abdel Fattah

Alaa Abdel Fattah’s vision of a very different Egypt, along with that of millions of young Egyptians, has itself...

Juan Cole
February 1, 2023
A picture taken during a guided tour organised by Egypt's State Information Service on February 11, 2020, shows an Egyptian policeman near watch towers at Tora prison on the southern outskirts of the Egyptian capital Cairo. (Photo by Khaled DESOUKI / AFP) (Photo by KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images)
DAWN

Egypt: Mother of Teenager Sentenced for Peaceful 2019 Protests Commits Suicide

Egyptian authorities should immediately release those imprisoned by a terrorism’s court’s arbitrary mass sentence of 82 people, including 22...

DAWN
February 1, 2023
Demonstrators are raising Syrian opposition flags and placards as they rally against a potential rapprochement between Ankara and the Syrian regime in the opposition-held city of Azaz, on the border with Turkey in Syria's northern Aleppo province, on December 30, 2022. (Photo by Rami Alsayed/NurPhoto)
Democracy In Exile

Where Would Rapprochement Between Turkey and Syria Leave the Syrian Opposition?

Turkey’s defense and intelligence ministers met with their Syrian counterparts in Moscow late last month, in the first high-level...

Emily Milliken
January 27, 2023
Next Post

The Silent Branch: How Israel’s Supreme Court Crushes Palestinian Rights

The Case for Reparations to the Victims of Yemen's War

February 2, 2023

We Are All Alaa Abdel Fattah

February 1, 2023
A picture taken during a guided tour organised by Egypt's State Information Service on February 11, 2020, shows an Egyptian policeman near watch towers at Tora prison on the southern outskirts of the Egyptian capital Cairo. (Photo by Khaled DESOUKI / AFP) (Photo by KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Egypt: Mother of Teenager Sentenced for Peaceful 2019 Protests Commits Suicide

February 1, 2023

Categories

  • Advocacy
  • Aid Conditionality
  • Anonymous Interviews
  • Anonymous Interviews Egypt
  • Anonymous Interviews Saudi Arabia
  • Anonymous Interviews UAE
  • Cases
  • Cases Egypt
  • Cases Saudi Arabia
  • Cases UAE
  • Countries
  • Culprits
  • Culprits Egypt
  • Culprits Israel
  • Culprits Saudi Arabia
  • Culprits UAE
  • DAWN
  • Dawn's Advocacy
  • Democracy In Exile
  • Editor's Pick
  • Egypt
  • Feature
  • Fellows
  • Foreign Policy
  • Human Rights
  • Human Rights Go to War
  • International Actors
  • Israel-Palestine
  • Lobbyists
  • Lobbyists Israel Palestine
  • Palestine
  • Political prisoners
  • Press Release Egypt
  • Press Release Israel-Palestine
  • Press Release Saudi Arabia
  • Press Release UAE
  • Press Releases
  • Saudi Arabia
  • UAE
  • Uncategorized
  • United Nations
  • US – Egypt
  • US – Saudi Arabia
  • US – UAE
  • USA

SUPPORT OUR MISSION

Donate Today

About Us

Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) is a nonprofit organization that promotes democracy, the rule of law, and human rights for all of the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Support Us

Donate Now

Newsletter

Facebook Twitter Instagram Linkedin Youtube

© DAWN All rights reserved. | Website Design by KRS Creative.

DONATE TODAY