What are we to make of Sisi's popularity?

Number 10 will this week host its own Pyramid-shaped elephant in the room as Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi sits down for an expensive meal with Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron. There will be protesters hooting in the background, but the said elephant will repeat only one mantra: “Sisi is quite popular.” This is true, in many ways.

Though Mohamed Morsi was elected democratically, tens of millions of Egyptians did not vote for him. Only one survey published by the “Egyptian Centre for Media Studies and Opinion” showed a majority opposing Sisi’s coup, yet the accuracy of that survey has been queried by Egypt analyst H.A. Hellyer and several Egyptian pollsters, who said that the methodology and the circumstances of the organisation suggested bias. Exaggerations happened on the other side of the fence too; Sisi claimed ludicrously that half of Egypt had turned up to his pro-coup demonstrations. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

Critics would say that polls can only ever be a marginal indicator of Sisi’s current popularity. This is also true. For obvious reasons, surveys conducted in geographical territories controlled by authoritarian state or sub-state actors are often unreliable. This is certainly the case when looking at polls undertaken under Sisi or the ousted Hosni Mubarak, but it is not necessarily accurate for polls conducted during Morsi’s rule, when freedom of speech in Egypt was riding high.

One damning survey suggested that in July 2013, half of Egyptians already thought that their country would be worse off in 5 years’ time than it had been under Mubarak. Polls conducted just weeks after Mubarak’s downfall in 2011 also showed that 88 per cent still gave the military as an institution a good rating.

The Egyptian people are as naturally intelligent as any nation, but we must now also recognise the impact that Sisi’s propaganda is having on their collective political judgement. When we assess the size of Sisi’s support, we should make no differentiation between those who have decided they like him based on propaganda, and those who like him no matter what.

As has been documented, pro-regime journalists and military propagandists have over the past eighteen months effectively locked down freedom of expression, while presenting a carefully-censored version of the truth to Egyptian voters. We know the power that the media possesses to have immediate and tangible effects on public opinion; for example, that the single decision of TV news directors to begin labelling the Muslim Brotherhood as “terrorists” produced a measurable shift in the public mood against the movement.

As far as the casual viewer in Egypt tuning-in to a pro-Sisi channel every evening is concerned, we now cannot expect them to develop anything other than a positive review of the status quo; not necessarily born of reality, but born out of the “reality” they read about or watch in the state-controlled media. The important caveat here is that rigorous scepticism about the media is not a concept alien to many Egyptians, and it’s already possible to detect some “switching off” as people realise that much of what the fetid Cairo press is pumping out is government rubbish.

The uncomfortable popularity of Sisi is not unique. Half of Syria supported Assad at the outset of the civil war and millions, it is claimed, still do. Their voice is rarely heard in the debate in the West. The House of Saud is vicious and cruel to its most vocal opponents — Sheikh Ali Al-Nimr or Raif Badawi, for example — but millions of Saudis are apparently content with their lot, so long as jobs, welfare, fuel, food and house prices remain stable. The UAE’s Bin Zayeds are extremely popular in cosmopolitan Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the two emirates which have benefited the most from the monarchy’s internationalist policies.

So, does it matter that Sisi is a bit more popular than people let on? Does it matter that autocrats often have support bases that run into the millions, if not more? The fact that they have a significant degree of popular support certainly doesn’t justify what they do, because what autocrats do is all too often disgusting, degrading, deadly and inexcusable. That Sisi is popular does, however, present us with some uncomfortable realpolitik, for he is in it for the long term.

If Sisi is as smart as Doctor Evil, he will loosen the terms of the crackdown on his people in a few years’ time, like Mubarak, Nasser and Sadat did before him. Then he will settle in. He hopes that the economy will stabilise and that at least a few of his promised infrastructure projects will go ahead; that dozens more Western companies like Vodafone will set up their English-speaking call centres in Cairo, boosting employment amongst restless graduates; that foreign investment will start creeping back in and tourism will rise again; that new trade agreements with the EU will bear fruit; that jobs will be held and businesses will run; and that the trains will run on time. All the usual ingredients for a people walking into a classic Egyptian dictatorship.

In a few years, just as they were under Mubarak, Nasser and Sadat, restrictions on press freedom may lift and tens of thousands of imprisoned anti-regime Islamists will be quietly rehabilitated; unfortunately, they and other dissidents may come creeping back into freedom, only to find that the revolution during which they were locked-up has ended. Sisi has strong international support in the region and beyond. Many more years or even decades could pass before there’s another change of ruler in Cairo.

The desperate tragedy of the Egyptian revolution is that Sisi has won. This isn’t a process any more, this isn’t evolving. Sisi is the end. Short of a famine, he and a few others, backed by millions, now control the country for the long term, until the next revolution.

His popularity will be part of the reason why he will rule for so long, a popularity that he will have bought, extracted through deceit, earned and bludgeoned. The trick to being a good dictator is to be just popular enough, and Sisi has the intelligence and the public relations know-how to make this happen.

To say that Sisi is popular is not to make an excuse for him or what he is doing and what he will do in the future. Despite any popularity that his style of government may have, it remains utterly idiotic for Western powers to back him. The unravelling of the Arab Spring has taught us that when dictators fall, they can do so without warning and with disastrous effects. Discontent in the Middle East was allowed to bubble away for far too long, with Western diplomats misinterpreting political calm as endless serenity.

There is therefore only one question Mr. Cameron should be asking when he sits down for expensive dinners with the generals of Egypt (or the House of Saud, for that matter): “How long before you guys make your country a democracy?” And if Sisi or Salman start banging on about how popular they are, Cameron should tell them that it doesn’t matter, because since the disasters of the Arab Spring, Britain has decided that our allies in the Middle East have to be democratic, and that has to happen now; that reform has to happen from within in order to be durable, and it has to happen fast, which is something that Cameron’s dinner guests, as dictators, are uniquely and personally able to facilitate. A failed Arab Spring II, especially if the Gulf States were included, could be a disaster for the world. So please, Mr Cameron, tell Sisi he’s had a nice run, but it’s time for a change. Pass the message on to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi too.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.