The Egyptian Presidential Election 2014

The Egyptian presidential election this time is between former army chief Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and longtime Nasserist politician Hamdeen Sabahi, who finished third in Egypt's 2012 presidential poll.

Egyptians living overseas started lining up to vote in the presidential election, but many are boycotting the presidential election altogether. I’m one of these people.

The decision to boycott the presidential election very much depends on whom you ask. People from the  Muslim Brotherhood who support Morsi believe that his ousting was a coup, and they still believe that Morsi is the president of Egypt.

On the other hand most activists don't see that the election is going to change much in Egyptian politics. It is just an election like other elections we have had since the removal of Mubarak in 2011. This election is designed to give control to another ex-military man who believes that freedom of speech is not necessary right now, and it might hurt the country.

However I boycott the election because I don’t see any sign of change. I also think that this election is forcing every Egyptian to choose between the bad and the worst; by the worst I mean former army chief Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi.

I know that sometimes you don’t get what you want, but we have been getting the bad end of the bargain all the time. Therefore we have to demand change and we have to get our voices heard.

People didn’t sacrificed their lives during the uprising so former army chief Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi could become the president of Egypt. They lost their life seeking change and democracy. However we are too far away from that goal.

Abdel Fattah El-Sisi for President?

With a high approval rating, many Egyptians think that Abdel Fattah El-Sisi is the answer to all the country’s problems. and they saying that  he is the hero God sent to make everything right again -- until he opened his mouth during an interview, which was aired in two parts, on a private Egyptian channel.

The TV interview with sisi last week revealed an out of touch military man with has no answers or understanding of how bad things are in Egypt. It also showed that he is not prepared to be the leader everyone desperately wants him to be.

His answer to a debilitating economy and high unemployment is to create trucks out of thin air and hand them over to young men to use as mobile vegetable shops. When he was asked where the trucks are coming from, Sisi said "don't worry they will be here if I say so" with the attitude of a high school bully.

When Siai was pressed to further explain his solution to the unemployment issue, he mention something about telling the banks to buy the trucks and then the drivers would be responsible for repaying the loans when they started making money.

It was clear that he had been put on the spot, He didn’t have prepared answers. However these questions should have been thought of before he ever agreed to be on the interview. Mind you that these questions are on mind of everyone in Egypt: What are you going to do about the economy? How can you solve the unemployment problems? education? corruptions? all of this are questions that need to be answered by someone who is running for president.

Sisi also promised that he will eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood from the political stage in Egypt. His language insinuated that he is going to remove them by any means necessary.

Now Egypt is faced with an unqualified front runner for president. He is a military man who thinks that he can create things out of thin air, and eliminate his opponents by any means necessary.

Unfortunately Sisi will win and the struggle will continue to find someone better to lead Egypt out of the dark ages.

Run Sisi Run

Many people think the idea of Abdelfattah El Sisi running for president is a great idea, and that it might bring the stability and security that Egypt needs right now. Among the supporters of Sisi running for president is Omer Musa, who used to work for Mubarak's government, and many other Mubarak cronies. Why do they support Sisi's canadcy? Because they are used to the system of corruption from Mubarak's era and they hope that it might come back if Sisi becomes the president.  

I think that having another military man running the country is a huge step back. Not only would Sisi follow in the footsteps of Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak, his retaliation will go a lot farther than detaining activists, or locking up the Muslim Brotherhood. He will have nothing to stop him from keeping the whole country in a state of submission.

Despite the the history of military violence against the protesters and the Muslim Brotherhood right after removing first Mubarak and Morsi, I have been hearing many talk on Egyptian and international media about the possibility of Sisi running as a presidential candidate in 2014. Not only has his candidacy been occupying people's minds, it is also a hot topic among activists who have experienced the rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces “SCAF” in 2011 to 2012, which resulted many deaths and detentions for activists.

The idea of Sisi running is unpopular among activists because it means that all their hard work, and the people who died since the initial revolution, will have been for nothing. Everyone understands that if Sisi runs he will become the president no matter who is running against him. Sisi’s winning will mean one thing; that he will have absolute power. Really think about it. The military already has control over the economy and the weapons.

After removing Morsi, the military provided Egypt with better security than they had experienced since Mubarak, or during Morsi's one year presidency. Sisi captured most if not all Muslim Brotherhood heads, after giving them a chance to show their true skin by inciting violence and protesting endlessly until Egyptians were sick and tired of the Muslim Brotherhood and their sore loser strategies.

On the other hand, I don’t think that the military was behind the lake of the security during Morsi's presidency. But they witnessed it and didn’t do anything to stop it. Which makes it obvious that the military's strategy for allowing the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood was to let them fail, and turn the public opinion against them. I’m not saying that the Muslim Brotherhood would have succeeded if there were security in place, but it would have made it harder to get rid of them.

The reason why I think that Muslim Brotherhood would have failed anyway is that they had no vision. All that Morsi and the supreme leader of Muslim Brotherhood wanted was to have greater control of Egypt, and to install Muslim Brotherhood members in the government to replace the representatives of the Mubarak regime. They had complete disregard to the people needs.  

Not only did the Muslim Brotherhood have no vision to rule the country, but they allowed the fact that they were the winners of two elections consecutively to cloud their judgment, so they turned a blind eye to the people who elected them in the first place.

I’m glad they are gone, and no longer ruling Egypt. And I’m specifically happy that what they did during the time of Morsi may have ruined their chances of ever being elected again.

However now Egypt has to face the harsh reality that there's nobody worth voting for when it comes to President. Egyptians are longing for someone like Nasser to come and rule the country, and rally people around him. Unfortunately we don’t have such a person.

On Monday Sisi met with a group of representatives from Congress, and I have to wonder why. I do think Sisi might be smarter than the average military leader, but I still think it will be the worst thing for him and the country if he runs for president.

Are we seeing the last of the Muslim Brotherhood?

Another Friday protest from the Muslim Brotherhood supporters against the Egyptian military. However their call to protest attracted a low turnout. The protest was another attempt from the Muslim Brotherhood to rally in Cairo and other cities in Egypt to show their discontent with what they call the illegal removal of an elected democratic president, Morsi. The low turnout in Cairo, and the non-existent rallies around Egypt, show the unpopularity of the Muslim Brotherhood at the moment.

The military has had the upper hand so far. They have put Cairo under curfe,w and barbed wire is surrounding several squares in Cairo after the bloody clashes that left over 1,000 people dead.

The Muslim Brotherhood are losing ground in all over Egypt, and after the military detained many of their leaders over the past week, they appear scattered and less organized.

The issue I have now is that we are going backward. Many Egyptians were killed, and many people were arrested arbitrarily. It is not the right way to seek justice, or to move forward toward democracy. The Egyptian revolutionaries in Egypt fought for freedom and the end of emergency law in 2011. However, after the Muslm Brotherhood protests turned violent, the military chose to restore emergency law for the protection of the people. I have a feeling they could have done it without bringing back emergency law, but this is the way they decided to handle it.

The former President Hosni Mubarak, meanwhile, was let go from prison on Thursday and taken to a military hospital in Cairo. Mubarak was ousted during Egypt's 2011 revolution, and his release has angered Egyptians from all walks of life, and has sparked concern that the Egyptian military authorities are reinstating the old regime, which is highly unlikely. Mubarak will still appear before court to face trial for different charges related to the January 25, 2011 revolution.

However I think that if Morsi were still in power today Mubarak would have gotten out of prison anyway. Mubarak wasn’t released because of the failure of Morsi. It is a failure of the judguary system we have in Egypt. The whole Mubarak trial was filled with mistakes, in addition to a corrupt judiciary system that was installed long before Mubarak or Morsi took office.

After the arrest of many of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders over this past few weeks, is the Muslim Brotherhood weakened, or is the worst yet to come?

The Muslim Brotherhood Shows Their True Colors

As we are watching the news and the images coming out of Egypt, and the death toll, you can see the contrast between the protests that ended Morsi’s regime and what has been going on since then.

The Muslim Brotherhood are adamant about fighting the will of the people. If they actually cared about legitimacy, they would have accepted the people’s decision to remove Morsi from office. On June 30th over 33 million of people walked out to participate peacefully in a rally asking Morsi to resign. That is more than the total number of people who voted for Morsi, and far more than have participated in protests calling for his return to office.

I understand that the Muslim Brotherhood won all elections that followed the toppling of Mubarak, and Morsi governed the country for a year. But we cannot ignore the fact that Morsi’s regime ended because of mammoth rallies and overwhelming popular opinion denouncing his rule as incompetent and partisan.

Now we are seeing Morsi supporters being used as pawns in a pointless fight. I do respect their right to protest, but you have to pick your battles. It is obvious that the Muslim Brotherhood has lost the people’s trust and sympathy.

We are left now with a group who prey on the Egyptian people’s love of their religion, and their lack of awareness about the political issues. They carelessly put these faithful followers in harm’s way, and encourage them to engage in illegal acts, such as burning churches, attacking the armed forces, and defying the military. The direct result of this behavior is that Egypt is now under emergency law again, despite the all the hard work Egyptian activists did to get it overturned in 2012.

I don’t endorse violence against civilians who are protesting for a cause they believe in. But when the Muslim Brotherhood members protest with guns and torches, I need my local authorities to take action to protect the rest of the people. Because now we are not talking about a peaceful protest or sit-in, we are talking about a terrorist organization taking to the street with assault weapons to harm civilians and challenge the authorities.

The violence we are witnessing these days from the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t even unusual for them. They seem to welcome the bloodshed to prove their legitimacy and their appeal. The Muslim Brotherhood lost a great deal of public support after their recent sit-in, and they are now facing police and military on the streets of Cairo. Their supporters are shrinking to a few thousand, and many of the people fighting in the streets on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood aren’t even Egyptians, but have come from other countries to fight for their faith.

The Muslim Brotherhood chants about peace during their protests, however their protests have been anything but peaceful. Protesters used women and children as shields, and some had machine guns. Snipers maimed security forces from the tops of buildings. More than a dozen churches were attacked and burned on a single day by Morsi supporters.

It seems like the Muslim Brotherhood has declared war against Egypt, and is using terrorist tactics to foil the country’s aim of forming a secular democratic civil state. They have been seen burning churches, schools, and museums, randomly firing on and killing civilians sitting in their homes, burning public and private property, and targeting government buildings and police stations. These are all are clear forms of  terrorism.

What we have in Egypt right now isn’t a civil war; it is is civil unrest. In a civil war you generally see a divided military, but that hasn’t happened here. On the contrary, the unified military is very popular in Egypt right now, and the police as well. We have even seen regular civilians forming vigilante groups to defend their neighborhoods against attacks from the Muslim Brotherhood rallies.

The Muslim Brotherhood failed to impose a Taliban-like state in Egypt. The vast majority of Egyptians are more moderate muslims, and are opposed to such an idea. The misconception here that all Egyptians are in the streets protesting. The truth is the people protesting on the streets of Egypt are only the Muslim Brotherhood followers and supporters, and their popularity is getting weaker by the day.