Egyptians do not trust General El-Sisi’s promises

Egyptians had barely begun to take comfort in President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s pledge not to tamper with the Constitution and his assurance that 2030 would mark the end of his third presidential term, only for him to deal them a severe blow by revealing his intention to select Egypt’s next ruler through a training programme at the military academy run by the armed forces.

El-Sisi, 72, made the remarks earlier this week during a graduation ceremony for new classes at the Military Academy in the New Administrative Capital, east of Cairo. The remarks came just days after he reaffirmed his commitment to the Constitution at the armed forces’ 44^th educational seminar.

Militarising the presidency

The vision outlined by the Egyptian president would expand the role of the Military Academy, which already trains judges, diplomats, teachers, imams from the Ministry of Awqaf and civil servants across various sectors.

Under the plan, the academy would also prepare a generation of qualified leaders to take up the presidency and other key state positions.

El-Sisi, who came to power in a military coup that ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, on 3^rd July 2013, said he would ensure that “Egypt has capable people ready to take on responsibility” before leaving office.

El-Sisi continued: “They will train at the academy to understand the nature of the state and how to safeguard it, creating an opportunity for selection and election among them.” He added that “no ill-intentioned person, criminal or traitor will rule Egypt after me”.

The presidential proposal, which comes less than four years before El-Sisi’s third term expires, involves a 30-month training programme funded by the armed forces and comprising more than 7,500 hours of training and education.

The programme is intended for holders of doctoral degrees aged between 40 and 50. At the same time, a draft law is to be prepared to regulate the programme and establish a mechanism for selecting qualified candidates to contest the 2030 presidential election.

Notably, El-Sisi has proposed an exemption from the programme for some people, including those who have spent six years or more working in government, on the grounds that they already possess the practical experience needed to assume leadership responsibilities. This opens the door to preparing a close associate to succeed him without being bound by the programme’s outcomes, or to engineering a controlled and conditional transfer of power that produces an internally agreed successor who follows the same security and economic policies pursued since 2013, according to political researcher Hamdy El-Masry.

Dr Mustafa Kamel El-Sayyid, a professor of political science at Cairo University, says that “simply stipulating that candidates in the 2030 presidential election must be graduates of the Military Academy is itself a violation of the Constitution, which imposes no such requirement for standing in the presidential election or any other election”.

Prominent Egyptian journalist Abdel Azim Hammad, former editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram and Al-Shorouk newspapers, commented in a post on his personal Facebook page: “Even in dictatorships such as China, political parties and elections are the academy that produces political leaders. You have exhausted us, Mr President, with ideas stranger than fiction.”

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Political manoeuvre

The opposition views El-Sisi’s pledges to respect the Constitution as nothing more than a political manoeuvre intended to ease public discontent, amid widespread but largely suppressed anger over soaring living costs, rising prices, low wages, increasing poverty and unemployment, and mounting domestic and foreign debt.

Years ago, in an interview with the American network CNBC, El-Sisi made an unequivocal pledge, saying: “I support adhering to two presidential terms, each lasting four years … and we will not interfere with the Constitution.”

But the former defence minister, who formally assumed the presidency in June 2014, reneged on his promises and succeeded in pushing through constitutional amendments in a 2019 referendum. These extended the presidential term from four to six years, allowed him to run for a third term and paved the way for him to remain in office until 2030. In effect, El-Sisi doubled his potential time in power from eight to 16 years.

Egyptian critic Mohamed Abdelbaset, a professor of criticism and discourse analysis at Aswan University in the south of the country, suggested in a Facebook post that “the aim of El-Sisi’s proposal is to block the way for two types of president: Islamists of all stripes, followed by nationalists of every shade, particularly Ahmed Tantawi”.

Tantawi is a left-wing journalist and opposition politician who previously served as a member of parliament. He emerged as a potential challenger to El-Sisi, but security agencies obstructed the collection of the public endorsements required for his candidacy, forcing him out of the presidential race in 2024. An Egyptian court subsequently convicted him of circulating electoral papers without official authorisation, sentenced him to prison and barred him from standing in parliamentary elections for five years.

Bleak scenarios

Amid widespread suspicion and mistrust of El-Sisi’s statements and positions, several scenarios are being discussed in Egypt. The first is that he could renege on his pledge and encourage popular campaigns calling for him to remain in power, such as the “Don’t Leave Us, Sisi” campaign, or engineer security crises to justify his continued rule. Parliament could then introduce constitutional amendments to extend his time in office until 2036. The second scenario is that the president appoints a vice-president to ensure a smoother transfer of power. The third is that Egypt genuinely sees a new president, with candidates emerging from the proposed training programmes to contest a competitive presidential election under the Constitution, paving the way for a peaceful transition that preserves the stability of the state and its institutions.

Parliamentary sources who spoke to Middle East Monitor on condition of anonymity suggested a fourth scenario: engineering a politically safe successor while El-Sisi retains exceptional powers behind the scenes, along the lines of the experience of interim president Adly Mansour.

Mansour assumed the presidency following the military coup in mid-2013, serving for a transitional period of one year before paving the way for the defence minister at the time to take office after winning the July 2014 presidential election with 96.91 per cent of the vote, compared with approximately 3 per cent for his sole rival, left-wing leader Hamdeen Sabahi.

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Dynastic succession

The most pessimistic observers do not rule out a fifth scenario: putting forward Mahmoud Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the president’s son, as a candidate in the next presidential election. This follows the circulation on WhatsApp of images and messages from unknown sources promoting his candidacy in the 2030 election as part of a broad campaign.

Mahmoud El-Sisi is an intelligence officer with the rank of brigadier general. He was promoted to head of the technical office of the head of the General Intelligence Service and subsequently became the agency’s deputy head, making him the second-highest-ranking figure in Egyptian intelligence.

He is reportedly responsible for sensitive files and closely connected to major economic investments.

Under the title ‘Campaign or Game?’, former Reuters journalist Mohamed Abdellah questioned a poster promoting dynastic succession. In a post on his personal Facebook page, he asked: “Is this poster calling for Mahmoud, the president’s son, to run for office and succeed his father, the beginning of an organised campaign, or is it an electronic game intended by its creators to stir anxiety and unrest in the country?” (Link to the post)

The sixth scenario involves managing the post-El-Sisi transition by bringing technocratic figures or former military leaders to power with the agreement of state institutions. According to El-Masry, this would require a consensus figure committed to pursuing fairer economic policies and releasing prisoners to ease political tensions in the country.

The seventh scenario, which the opposition hopes for, is the emergence of national unity among liberal, leftist and Islamist forces, backed by mass mobilisation. This could lead to a revolutionary movement putting forward a strong candidate for the 2030 presidential election, capable of seizing power from the military and returning the generals to their barracks.

In any event, the coming years will bring uncertainty over the future of El-Sisi’s rule and who will govern Egypt in 2030. The country will face a period of ambiguity and political anxiety under a general who no longer enjoys the trust of the majority of Egyptians, having reneged on his promises over more than 13 years in power.

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