Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi wins another stage-managed election in Egypt

A POLITICIAN COULD not ask for a better outcome: to best three challengers with 89.6% of the vote and the highest turnout since the 1990s. In this case, it was literally what he asked for. The outcome was predetermined.

On December 18th Egypt announced that Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the army general who has ruled since 2014, had won a third term as president. Unlike the past two elections, which pit him against a single patsy, in this month’s ballot he faced three little-known challengers: voters had more choices, though still no good ones. His most prominent would-be opponent dropped out of the race in October after authorities arrested and harassed his supporters.

Turnout was reported as 67%, around 20 points higher than the only free and fair election Egypt has ever had, in 2012. That seems preposterous, though the government did its part to boost numbers by bussing civil servants to polling stations and distributing boxes of flour, rice and other essentials to voters at polling stations. The result lets Mr Sisi claim a broad mandate to pursue what will be some unpopular policies.

He will need it. In a glimpse of the challenges ahead, some voters grumbled that the state’s goody bags did not include sugar, the price of which has soared almost 40% since October, to 55 pounds ($1.78) a kilo. It is not a good sign when state bribery cannot keep pace with inflation.

Mr Sisi’s most immediate concern is the war in Gaza, one of three conflicts on Egypt’s borders (the others are Libya and Sudan). As Israel has expanded its offensive in southern Gaza in recent weeks, tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled to the relative safety of Rafah, the southernmost city in the enclave. Officials in Cairo are nervous that the Israeli army will stretch its campaign to include Rafah, which could send civilians fleeing through the crossing there towards Egypt.

The Egyptian army has built berms and fences to reinforce its side of the border. In private, officials say Egyptian soldiers would not fire on Palestinians trying to flee Gaza. But they worry about having to care for an influx of refugees, on top of the more than 300,000 who have fled Sudan since the outbreak of civil war there in April.

Mr Sisi has tried to walk a tightrope on Gaza. He has called for a ceasefire and allowed a few stage-managed protests against the war. But he has not cut ties with Israel and, unlike Hosni Mubarak, the dictator deposed in 2011, he has not allowed spontaneous shows of pro-Palestine activism. To Mr Sisi and his allies, that forbearance was the beginning of Mubarak’s end: activists who organised in support of Palestine later turned their focus to their own president. A protest on October 20th that reached Tahrir square, the heart of the 2011 revolution, was quickly dispersed and some of the marchers were arrested.

Mubarak felt confident enough to allow such demonstrations. Mr Sisi does not, because he is dealing with Egypt’s worst economic crisis in decades, the result of almost a decade of debt-fueled spending. Persistent hard-currency shortages have hobbled businesses throughout the year. Many Egyptian banks have all but barred their customers from using their credit or debit cards to make foreign transactions. Since October, all three major ratings agencies have downgraded Egyptian debt, which was already rated junk.

Annual inflation in November was 36%, down from a record high of almost 40% in August but still almost twice the level of a year earlier. With food prices up 65%, sugar is not the only staple that is suddenly unaffordable. Onion prices rose 423% over the past year, meat 84% and tea 78%.

Though the exchange rate is meant to be flexible, it has not budged since February. The stability cannot last. The IMF, which approved a $3bn loan to Egypt in December 2022, expects Mr Sisi will float the currency. He will at least have to devalue it again, for the fourth time in two years: On the black market a dollar now fetches around 50 Egyptian pounds, compared to an official rate near 31 pounds. That will keep inflation high.

The war next door is making all this worse. In October, amid fears that its natural-gas platforms could be struck by Hamas in Gaza or Hizbullah in Lebanon, Israel temporarily suspended gas exports to Egypt. That forced the Egyptian government to impose rolling blackouts nationwide that lasted up to four hours a day. Tourism accounts for 5% of Egypt’s GDP and is its third-largest source of foreign currency. Bookings have dropped sharply since October. Attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea will hurt Suez Canal transit fees, another vital source of dollars.

Mr Sisi has no good answers for the economic crisis. He admonishes Egyptians to work harder and eat less and lobbies his wealthy Gulf allies for investment and aid. But he has refused to shrink the army’s economic empire, which crowds out the private sector, or to halt state spending on mega-projects and arms. He will need to come up with better ideas—or, regardless of this month’s sham election, his mandate to rule may not last. ■