Egypt: more than a decade in power and increasingly authoritarian rule

Sarah Ben Nefis­sa. Pres­i­dent al-Sisi has cre­at­ed a high­ly intense form of polit­i­cal author­i­tar­i­an­ism, much more secu­ri­ty-focused than that of his pre­de­ces­sor, Hos­ni Mubarak (Pres­i­dent of the Arab Repub­lic of Egypt from 1981 to 2011), who was over­thrown after the 2011 upris­ings. Under al-Sisi, the demo­c­ra­t­ic gains achieved by the peo­ple have been large­ly erased. Today, the polit­i­cal regime is based on the cen­tral role of the pres­i­den­cy, the mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion of the gov­ern­ment and par­lia­ment, and, above all, the grow­ing involve­ment of the army in polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic life, which has been estab­lished as the guardian of the Con­sti­tu­tion and democracy.

Accord­ing to al-Sisi’s vision, it was the lax­i­ty and per­mis­sive­ness of the Mubarak regime that was respon­si­ble for the 2011 rev­o­lu­tion and, by exten­sion, for the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic tur­moil that fol­lowed. Based on this read­ing of his­to­ry, a series of restric­tive mea­sures led to the estab­lish­ment of state cap­i­tal­ism¹, dom­i­nat­ed by the mil­i­tary apparatus.

All polit­i­cal par­ties, with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood at the fore­front, have been weak­ened. Con­trary to expec­ta­tions, the Pres­i­dent has not filled this polit­i­cal vac­u­um by cre­at­ing a par­ty struc­tured around him­self, as is cus­tom­ary under author­i­tar­i­an regimes. Only loy­al­ist polit­i­cal groups, cre­at­ed in 2013 by the secu­ri­ty agen­cies, exist and reg­u­lar­ly manip­u­late the selec­tion of can­di­dates stand­ing for elec­tion. As for Par­lia­ment, it can­not act as a coun­ter­weight to the exec­u­tive, as its mem­bers are reduced to rub­ber-stamp­ing pres­i­den­tial decrees and draft laws with­out distinction.

This con­trol extends beyond the polit­i­cal sphere. The regime fears the sym­bol­ic Tahrir Square being tak­en over by a new pop­u­lar upris­ing. Every mea­sure is being tak­en to ward off this spec­tre: asso­ci­a­tions are strict­ly con­trolled, NGOs are pre­vent­ed from oper­at­ing, demon­stra­tions are not autho­rised, and repres­sion is the state’s almost auto­mat­ic response. The media land­scape, which had under­gone lib­er­al­i­sa­tion under the impact of the pri­vati­sa­tion of the sec­tor since 2005, is see­ing a major return to state control.

Final­ly, on the judi­cial front, a major con­sti­tu­tion­al reform in 2019 reduced the inde­pen­dence of the judi­cia­ry, judges and mag­is­trates, giv­ing the pres­i­dent con­trol over judi­cial bod­ies. In total, more than 1,000 pris­ons are said to have been built since the begin­ning of his terms in office.

Whether it be pres­i­den­tial or par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, it is impos­si­ble to rely on offi­cial elec­tion results to under­stand the lev­el of sup­port for the gov­ern­ment in pow­er. The entire process is con­trolled in advance: it is almost impos­si­ble for an inde­pen­dent can­di­date to stand for elec­tion. The last elec­tions that offered any sem­blance of trans­paren­cy were in 2014. Ten years lat­er, the can­di­dates are cho­sen by al-Sisi. The last inde­pen­dent can­di­date in the 2023 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, Ahmed Tanta­wi, a for­mer mem­ber of par­lia­ment, was unable to stand and was sen­tenced to one year in prison for irreg­u­lar­i­ties iden­ti­fied by the secu­ri­ty services.

Eco­nom­i­cal­ly, the al-Sisi decade has had a pro­found impact on soci­ety. The new archi­tec­ture that has been erect­ed has called into ques­tion the “author­i­tar­i­an social pact” that has his­tor­i­cal­ly been in force in many polit­i­cal regimes in the region. The tac­it agree­ment is based on the exchange of free­dom for food, social and phys­i­cal secu­ri­ty. Far from this pact, the Pres­i­dent has built a state cap­i­tal­ism, using tools such as neolib­er­al aus­ter­i­ty poli­cies and the pric­ing of pub­lic goods and ser­vices, while pro­mot­ing the con­cen­tra­tion of wealth. The pri­ma­ry objec­tive was to cre­ate a new dom­i­nant social and eco­nom­ic class that would depend on him and be struc­tured around the army.

Al-Sisi is also known for his dreams of grandeur, all accom­pa­nied by superla­tives. He envi­sions pharaon­ic works to expand the Suez Canal, build a new cap­i­tal on the out­skirts of Cairo, a majes­tic opera house, the largest church in Africa, the largest mosque in Egypt, and much more. The real­i­ty is not so rosy. These megapro­jects are a total fail­ure, hav­ing been car­ried out with a great deal of opac­i­ty by mil­i­tary com­pa­nies. They are part­ly respon­si­ble for the eco­nom­ic bank­rupt­cy of the state.

The Renais­sance Dam planned by Ethiopia on the Blue Nile, upstream from the Egypt­ian Aswan Dam built under Nass­er, has been a source of ten­sion and fear for sev­er­al years. The main con­cern is the reduc­tion in the river’s flow and the wors­en­ing of droughts.

Apart from this dis­pute with Addis Aba­ba, reduc­ing water waste is a key nation­al issue. Sev­er­al mea­sures have been pro­posed, such as lin­ing the Nile’s irri­ga­tion canals or imple­ment­ing water rationing sys­tems (alter­nat­ing between three days with water and three days with­out). Anoth­er mea­sure, which has been strong­ly crit­i­cised, was to lim­it – or even ban – water-inten­sive crops such as rice. How­ev­er, this cere­al is the main source of nutri­tion for mil­lions of farm­ers in the coun­try². Sev­er­al megapro­jects have been launched to increase the amount of agri­cul­tur­al land by cre­at­ing new cul­tivable areas in the desert, notably the Future of Egypt in the New Delta project³. Here too, the megapro­jects pro­posed are not uni­ver­sal­ly popular.

The regime is cur­rent­ly very frag­ile. Social ser­vices are min­i­mal, and only the intel­li­gence ser­vices lis­ten to the peo­ple. Fur­ther­more, there is no ide­ol­o­gy capa­ble of win­ning the wide­spread sup­port of Egyp­tians, and the gov­ern­ment gen­er­al­ly views its pop­u­la­tion with contempt.

Al-Sis­si has been able to restore his image to some extent recent­ly with his posi­tions on region­al issues. He opposed Don­ald Trump’s posi­tion when the lat­ter want­ed to relo­cate Gazans to the Sinai. But recent­ly, peo­ple have begun to speak out more freely, as evi­denced by the social move­ments of inner-city res­i­dents against rent lib­er­al­i­sa­tion in May 2025. Move­ments to pro­tect lawyers, strikes by pri­vate sec­tor work­ers and the elec­tion of an inde­pen­dent can­di­date to head the jour­nal­ists’ union can be seen as signs. These are faint sig­nals that need to be monitored.

Interview by Alicia Piveteau