Reports claim veteran journalist warns that Sisi might become isolated

Observers have told Arabi 21 that journalist and writer Abdullah Al-Sinawi was referring to Muhammad Hasanayn Haikal when he mentioned “a close friend of President Sisi whose mutual relationship is old and tested” as a source in a recent article. The veteran journalist Haikal is the only person in Egypt who fits that description.

Writing in Al-Shuruq, Al-Sinawi quoted this “friend” as saying that he “fears to find Sisi alone and suspects that there are those who are seeking to impose political isolation upon him.” The headline of the article was telling: “The President is Alone”.

Writing in an unusually strong tone (which is not his normal style), Al-Sinawi warned that, “political isolation opens a door before confusion in public performance”, which seems to confirm that he is convinced of what the mutual friend has said.

“One time after the other,” he continued, “Al-Sisi has asked for the partnership of others, the entire [Egyptian] people, in shouldering the heavy responsibility without the existence of a single initiative that meets the repeated request.” There can be no partnership in responsibility without vision, without conception, without policies and without mechanisms, he warned the president. “From one crisis to another, the lack of competence is confirmed further and so is public mismanagement, so much so that the army has been called upon to play the role of suspended state institutions, as happened in responding to the crisis of the floods in Alexandria.”

Al-Sinawi’s article went as far as saying that Sisi has lost any legitimacy he might have had when he called for channels for public debate to be opened to “reflect on mistakes and rebuild legitimacy, which has been shattered by the rule which says ‘responsibility is a duty and freedom is a right’.” In fact, he added, “Responsibility is demanded by the repercussions of the Russian plane crash, an incident that threatens some sort of an economic siege… freedom is a necessity in order for responsibility to be genuine.”

He warned that, as bitter experience in Egypt has shown, whatever is artificial does not pass the test. “It is not possible to separate the domestic from the external in any way or in any context. Exposure domestically will definitely lead to external exposure in front of friends before the enemies see it.”

This issue, he insisted, deserves serious attention. “We cannot ignore the world, nor does Egypt deserve the see its citizens’ rights violated without recompense. Both cases deserve serious revision and an improvement in the levels of public performance.”

Al-Sinawi ended his article by referring to the claim that President Al-Sisi works alone without a qualified government and without political advisers. “That is indeed a disaster that should be attended to before it is too late,” he concluded.