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