THE arrest of a leading presidential candidate against Abdel Fattah el-Sisi should surprise no one, for Egypt, unfortunately, has become a police state that in many respects is worse than what it was under president Hosni Mubarak. Sami Annan was arrested for reasons that appear ludicrous. Even the news of his arrest was not made public immediately, and it was left to two of Mr Sisi’s top aides to break the news, one of them doing so via Twitter. Later, an official statement accusing Mr Annan, a former chief of staff, of breaching army regulations and inciting people against the armed forces, attempted to justify his arrest by saying the regime had acted to uphold the principle of the sovereignty of law. With Mr Annan in prison, only one candidate, Khaled Ali, still remains in the arena, but observers doubt if he will be allowed to contest the election, for in September he was convicted for ‘making an obscene gesture’ in public. Mr Sisi’s ‘re-election’ as president is now certain.

As army chief, Mr Sisi had responded to the Arab Spring by asking Mr Mubarak to resign. In the election that followed, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood formed the government and made Mr Sisi the defence minister. In July 2013, Mr Sisi staged a coup, overthrew the Morsi government and launched a crackdown on Brotherhood supporters, including the Aug 14, 2013 massacre that left thousands dead and injured. He then went on to hold bogus parliamentary and presidential elections. Mr Sisi hopes to go down in history as a builder. He proposes to build a new capital near Cairo and has ambitious plans to bring more land under cultivation. To ensure that his rights’ violations do not invoke American sanctions, Mr Sisi chose to be absent from the OIC summit in Istanbul on President Trump’s Jerusalem decision. Given the absolute power he enjoys, there is no doubt the March ‘election’ will give him what he got in the last presidential poll — a 97pc vote.

Published in Dawn, January 25th, 2018