MESSIAH STATUS
Sisi’s rise nearly three years ago ended a divisive experiment with rule by the Brotherhood and two years of unrest that followed the fall of long serving autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
A broad cross section of the public sincerely admired the stern general in dark sunglasses, who promised to restore stability to a country in chaos. Sweet shops could not sell cakes with his face on them fast enough. A year later he was elected with nearly 97 percent of the vote, winning ten million more votes than had been won by the man he toppled, Mohamed Mursi.
“Sisi came into power with huge levels of popularity,” said H.A. Hellyer, non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “That was never going to last. This messiah status is unsustainable.”
In a rambling speech last month, Sisi appeared angry and unsure, complaining that Egyptians were focusing on his faults rather than his achievements.
The speech was met by an unprecedented deluge of sarcastic comments from Egyptians on the Internet, with a popular description on social media even comparing him to Libya’s eccentric deposed leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Previously docile politicians have emerged in recent days to snipe.
Mohamed Abu al-Ghar, a prominent secularist and former Sisi supporter, wrote a column last week accusing Sisi of presiding over a collapsed economy, a police force that “beats and tortures” and a government whose ministers are purely “ceremonial”.
Amr Moussa, a Mubarak-era foreign minister who led a committee to draft a new constitution after Sisi’s takeover, told a news conference on Tuesday the charter was under threat from laws passed by Sisi.
Hamdeen Sabahy, a leftist politician who first backed Sisi’s crackdown on Islamists but ran against him in the 2014 election, launched an initiative in recent days to rally opposition groups and present a viable alternative, unthinkable a year ago.
“Egypt is experiencing the death of politics, dismissal of other points of views, a demonising of alternatives, a call for blind unity,” he told Reuters.
NATIONAL CONSENSUS
Among the subjects that were once ignored is human rights. Security forces killed hundreds of Islamists in one day after Sisi toppled Mursi. Thousands were arrested, and the crackdown expanded to include secular activists. But few complained until now, acknowledged Eissa, the newspaper editor.
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