Sisi’s Republic of Delusions
Summary: as President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi plows ahead with ever
more grandiose mega projects the disconnect between the Egyptian
government and its impoverished citizenry grows ever deeper.
We thank our regular contributor Maged Mandour for today’s
newsletter. Maged is a political analyst who also contributes to Middle
East Eye and Open Democracy. He is a writer for Sada, the Carnegie
Endowment online journal and the author of the recently published and
highly recommended Egypt under El-Sisi
(I.B.Tauris) which examines social and political developments since
the coup of 2013. You can find Maged’s most recent AD podcast here.
On 19 December, during the D-8 summit of 8 Islamic countries in Cairo, the Sisi regime unveiled a new Presidential Palace, located in the New Administrative Capital (NAC). A picture of opulence, the palace is 10 times the size of the White House, covering an estimated 170 Feddans. The unveiling of the palace led to open criticisms
of its opulence and size at a time when the country is going through a
dramatic debt crisis with a record increase in poverty rates.
The criticism was strong enough that the president was prompted to respond
claiming that the cost was born by the Administrative Capital for Urban
Development (ACUD) with the government renting buildings at a total
annual cost of between 7-10 billion EGP. He conveniently failed to mention that the ACUD is 51% owned by the military, making this a case of mass (mis-)appropriation of public funds.
The criticisms seem to have caught Sisi by surprise and is indicative
of a trend that signals eroding support amongst the mass of Egyptians
for the regime’s ideological edifice. Namely, a chauvinistic form of
nationalism that uses large vanity buildings - with little or no
apparent economic benefit - to propagate a narrative of national
greatness. Granted it has been effective in soliciting support amongst
large segments of the populace by serving as a physical manifestation of
the regime's conception of nationalist revival (and the obliteration of
its internal enemies.) However, the narrative now appears to be
crumbling under the weight of economic dislocation and mass
pauperisation.
The regime’s embrace of large vanity projects started early in Sisi‘s
tenure with the Suez Canal expansion launched in 2015 and costing an
estimated US$8 billion.
The project was heavily touted in regime controlled media, with the
then head of the Suez Canal Authority, Mohab Mamish stating that the
expansion would bring revenues of up to US$100 billion. It was a blatant piece of propaganda with the figure seemingly snatched from thin air.
When the project failed to achieve the promised economic revival Sisi backtracked stating in 2023 that the goal
was to “raise national morale.” This same logic has been applied to
other projects that offer little in terms of economic return. For
example, there is the Tahya Misr (Long Live Egypt) Bridge, the widest suspended bridge in the world, which was opened in 2019. Another even more lavish example is the Grand Mosque in the New Administrative Capital, which was opened in 2023. At the time, the mosque was estimated to have cost 800 million EGP (US$25.9 million.) It is not only huge, being the second largest in Africa, but boasts the tallest pulpit in the world standing at 16.6 metres. The mosque also claims that with a diameter of 22 metres and a whopping 24,300kg weight it possesses the largest chandelier in the world. The Grand Mosque was opened in a ceremony attended by Sisi in April 2023 at the height of the debt crisis.
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